In early 2017 we at beijingkids expressed some doubt as to whether the easing of the one child policy was leading to the surge in births hoped for by the government, and needed by the Chinese economy. Now figures for 2018 suggest that the birth rate is actually falling.

According to South China Morning Post, China experienced 15.23 million happy events last year, the lowest figure since 2014. That’s 10.94 births per 1,000 people, down from 12.95 two years ago, and the lowest rate recorded since 1961. However, older statistics are not regarded as being accurate by experts.

Either way, this represents a problem for policymakers. China needs more children to support an aging population and to maintain a growing economy. The one child policy was first relaxed in 2013, allowing parents to have two children if at least one of them was an only child. Then in 2016, all families were permitted two children. This led to a brief surge in births, but since then the numbers have fallen for two years in a row.

The reasons for this decline are complex, and there are no easy solutions. In part, it reflects the changing demographics of the country. There are 33 million more men than women in China; only India has a worse gender imbalance. With an aging population, the number of women of childbearing age is falling. This comes against the background of an economic slowdown, leaving many young urban couples struggling to pay high rents. And raising a child is expensive, given the pressures to spend lavishly on education in a highly competitive environment.

Perhaps the greatest challenge though is that decades of the strictly-enforced policy means generations have grown up with one child families as the norm. It’s hard to change people’s expectations and life plans overnight. The government has mooted introducing financial incentives for couples to have a second child, but tax breaks are likely to have less influence than KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) on social media promoting a glamorous lifestyle with a handsome husband – and one beautiful child.

Photo: Tyler Byber via Flickr

A baby boy was born four years after his parents were killed in a car accident, The Beijing News reported on April 10.

The boy is named 甜甜(Tiántián), which means “sweet”in Chinese

According to the news report, the boy’s genetic parents, Shen Jie (the father), and Liu Xi (the mother), from Wuxi, Jiangsu province, were on an infertility treatment, and unfortunately died in a car accident only five days before the scheduled date to have the embryo-transplanting surgery in Gulou Hospital in Nanjing.

Both Shen and Liu were only children, so their death left the Shen and Liu families with nobody to carry on their genetic line. The grieving parents then launched lawsuits to obtain custody of the four fertilized embryos frozen in the hospital.

After four lawsuits in three years, the parents won custody of the embryos in early 2017, after which they embarked a long journey trying to find a surrogate mother. Since surrogacy is prohibited in China, the grandparents finally found a surrogate mother in Laos.

Since all the airlines refused to carry the frozen embryos, they were transported to Laos by a team of experts in the surrogacy field, led by a man surnamed Liu (not related to the mother) and his colleagues.

The Laotian surrogate mother had no idea the baby she is carrying has such a special background until she came to China to give birth. “We didn’t want to give her (the surrogate mother) extra pressure,” said the expert surnamed Liu.

The baby boy was born in a hospital in Guangzhou on December 9, 2017. The grandparents named him 甜甜(Tiántián), which means “sweet” in Chinese.

“We’ve suffered so much grief after losing our children. We hope the grandchild will bring our life a taste of sweetness,” explained Hu Xingxian, the maternal grandmother.

Tiantian’s grandparents flew to the hospital in Guangzhou to see their long-wait grandson.

Tiantian’s birth has sparked a heated debate on Chinese social media, where China’s previous one-child policy and surrogacy were the two major controversial topics.

“Surrogacy should be legalized in China. Not all families are rich enough to cover the expense to get surrogacy abroad,” one netizen commented under the Beijing News Weibo post.

“This piece of news weighed down my mind. I’m an only child too, and I often feel so overwhelmed by both the financial and mental pressure that puts on me,” another netizen commented.

According to Chinanew.com.cn, there are more than one million parents in China who have lost their only children, which has not only resulted in one million heartbroken parents but also added extra pressure to the country’s support system for the aged.

Photos: bjnews.com.cn, Pixabay

An embryo, frozen in time for 16 years, came into the world this February 2017 as a healthy baby boy. Earlier this month, Yang, a 46-year old woman in Guangzhou Province, gave birth to her second son using an embryo that had been frozen 16 years prior. The son is reported to be healthy, weighing nearly 4kg upon birth. Reports have stated that Yang was one of nearly 1,000 women to apply for the in vitro program at Sun Yat-sen University in 2016. While the boy was successfully delivered, healthy and kicking, Yang did experience health complications during her pregnancy including mild thalassemia (a decrease in red blood cells that can lead to anemia) and hyperglycemia (high blood sugar).

This is not the first time an older woman in China has given birth to a child using a years-old embryo. In February 2016, a woman in Shaanxi Province was inseminated with a 12-year old embryo and gave birth to a baby girl. Later in July 2016, another mother in Jiangsu Province gave birth to a 3.3kg baby girl using an embryo that had first been frozen for 18 years. The mother in Jiangsu Province first began using IVF treatments in 1998 to help her conceive a child. After a few failed attempts, she decided to wait and successfully underwent IVF treatment in 2015. Both of the latter two women suffered from blocked fallopian tubes while the Yang, the mother in Guangdong Province, was said to be infertile. All three women were at least 40-years old at the time that they gave birth.

China’s revised family planning policy in 2015 put an end to its One Child Policy, a 35-year old policy that has resulted in an imbalance in both youth to elder populations as well as greater numbers of men compared to women. As a result, effective as of January 1, 2016, all married couples are now permitted to have two children total. The universal two-child policy does not apply to to single women or couples that do not fit China’s family planning policies.

China’s new two-child policy has also resulted in an increase in the average age of women applying for IVF in China. According to Xu Yanwen, the director of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, in 2016 the average age of women who requested to have their stored eggs unfrozen for use rose from 32.7 to 33.7. That same year, there were almost 1,000 women over the age of 40 that applied for the hospital’s IVF service.

The demand for IVF has grown rapidly in China over the past few years, leading to an up to two-year long waitlist for Chinese IVF clinics. Demand has risen to such a high level that companies outside of China have begun to take notice. Monash IVF, an IVF clinic based in Melbourne, Australia, signed an agreement with AC International Medical Tourism for up to 100 Chinese women in the first year of the program to receive IVF treatment in Australia. Monash also says they have hired Chinese staff to assist in helping Chinese patients under this new arrangement.

China’s new family planning policy and the increase in IVF treatment, among other factors, may lead to an increase in the number of births, but researchers say it may not be enough to change the overall birth rate. China’s economic growth has meant a natural decline in the desire for larger families. Additionally, the price of IVF treatment means that families with lower incomes often cannot afford to pay for the service while poorer provinces may have very few clinics providing IVF treatment at all.

While the increase in IVF treatment may not lead to the population boom the government might hope for, the option gives older couples the chance to fulfill their dreams of having a larger family. A dream that, for some, has been decades in the making.

On Thursday, March 24, Beijing People’s Congress revised its regulation on family planning and announced the following:

• Mothers are now entitled to a total of 128 days maternity leave—a 30 day increase from before.  Depending on the organization, the maternity leave can be further extended by one to three months.
• Existing mothers birthing their second child can have up to 218 days maternity leave (a 1-3 month extension) with their employer’s consent
• Fathers are entitled to a 15-day paternity leave
• Re-married couples with one child from each of their marriages are allowed to have another child (so three in total)
• Parents of a child with disabilities are now allowed to have a third child

Note: Municipalities differ in benefits offered, meaning these announcements only affect Beijingers (a Chinese citizen would have to be registered in Beijing).  Guangdong has 128 days of maternity leave, 15 days paternity leave.  Shanghai offers 128 days of maternity leave, 10 days paternity leave. Shandong offers 60 days of maternity leave. Shenzhen offers 10 days paternity leave.

The recently passed law was drafted only after having collected more than 4,100 suggestions from the public, and reflects the needs and desires of local residents.

If these announcements are baffling to you, let’s look at how China has improved its family planning policies in recent years:

• 2015 – China ended one-child policy (in place since 1979) with the introduction of a two-child policy
• 2013 – China announced a conditional two-child policy where if one parent is a single child, then a couple can have two children
• 2012 – National maternity leave extended from 90 to 98 days

If you’re expecting, or just curious of your benefits, you might be interested in knowing the details of your maternity leave benefits:

• You are entitled to it only after one (1) year of employment
• You can start your maternity leave 15 days prior to birth (no earlier)
• You can extend your maternity leave by at least 15 days (by law) if there are complications or if you’re birthing more than one child, in which case you are entitled to an additional 15 days per child born (triplets = 30 days extra)
• Your  128-day maternity leave does not exclude weekends, federal or national holidays
• If you are registered with the Social Security Bureau (SSB), then instead of a salary, you would be paid a maternity allowance, and would be an average of either your salary from the past 12 months, or an average of all employee salaries from the past 12 months—whichever is higher.  It gets complicated when we look at Tier-1 cities, such as Beijing, since the SSB will not pay more than three times the local average salary (2013 Beijing average salary was RMB 5,793×3=17,379), requiring the employer to cover the difference.
• If you are not registered with the SSB, then your employer will continue to pay your salary while you are on maternity leave.
• You cannot be terminated while pregnant or on maternity leave—it’s illegal!
• If you’re on a fixed-term contract and become pregnant, your contract will automatically be extended.

In addition to the maternity leave, upon returning to the office, mothers are entitled to “breast-feeding leave”, which encourages working mothers to nurse their children for at least a year.  This means:

• Mothers are allowed 1-hour of nursing/pumping break per day
• Companies will often encourage mothers to put the hour towards their vacations and have mothers work full, eight-hour days instead.

Finally, there is also a leave in place for women who have an abortion or a miscarriage:

• 15+ days of maternity leave if the pregnancy lasted less than four months
• 42+ days of maternity leave if the pregnancy lasted longer than four months

Source: The Nanfang, China Daily, China Briefing, CRI

Photo: Pixabay

Go out and make babies, comrades.

That may be the takeaway from the National People’s Congress and China People’s Political Consultative Conference earlier this month in relation to China’s one child policy. Premier Li Keqiang stated that the government is considering further changes to family planning laws after a recent relaxation of the policy failed to bring about the intended result, namely, significantly more babies in a nation that despite being overpopulated will soon have too many elderly people to be sustained by the labor force.

"(We will) make improvements and adjustments to the policy in accordance with legal procedures," the Economic Times quotes Li as saying.

China’s one child policy was first introduced in the late 1970s in order to control population growth through limiting couples to only having one child. As a result of the policy, one-third of China’s population was not eligible to have a second child without incurring a fine as a result.

In 2013, there was a relaxation in the policy, allowing couples to have two children if at least one of the parents was an only child. The main goal of this relaxation was to spur on the birth rate in hope that an eventual increase in that rate would allow for higher productivity, therefore helping to fund the nation and its large percentage of retirees.

Earlier this month Reuters also mentioned the high pressures building on China’s retirement funds: “Yin Weimin, Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, said the government will gradually raise the official retirement age, which is as low as 50 for some female workers, but stressed that any policy changes will be phased in over five years.”

These changes are necessary as Yin stated that the proportion of Chinese over the age of 60 will rise to 39 percent of the population, from 15 percent now. In combination with the expected 25-year low economic growth rate this year, there will be an increasing financial pressure on the economy as the state’s pension fund starts to wear thin.

This post first appeared on thebeijinger.com on March 16, 2015

Photo: thebeijinger

Following the emergence of online rumors on May 9 that Zhang Yimou fathered seven children in his two marriages and two relationships, state media confirmed that the authorities have started investigating the famous director. 

According to People’s Daily,Zhang Yimou may have to face a fine of RMB 160 million (USD 26 million) for breaking China’s one-child policy. The family planning policy states that all urban families must have no more than a child, with only a few exceptions. Whoever breaks the law must pay a “social compensation fee” based on their annual income.

Having a second kid in this economy is a daunting prospect, but it seems almost every set of parents I know are going for it – at least six of my closest friends and relatives are in the process, or have very recently had, “Lao Er” (老二).

And as if on cue, Beijing officials have recently announced that some Chinese families will be allowed to have a second child if the parents are both ‘only-children,’ the mother is younger than 28 and the second child is born within four years of the first. According to the China Daily, the changes come amidst “wide speculation” that the decades-old “one-child” policy would be relaxed, but some feel the revisions are not comprehensive enough, especially considering word of a growing labor shortage.

Of course none of this applies to most expat families (unless you are, or are married to, a Chinese national), but the financial issues surrounding the birth of a second child are equally daunting – especially here in Beijing with its over-the-top housing prices and the average cost of annual tuition (based on a rough calculation of schools listed in our Education Guide) tops RMB 70,000.

My wife and I have certainly been getting an earful from the grandparents, especially every time there’s news of yet another second pregnancy (it all seemed so much simpler when they were just fixated on whose kid went to which college), and we would certainly like to have a little brother or sister for our daughter, but the pressures of work, finances and family issues have left us feeling – ahem – a little ‘gun shy.’

Which is why I have an even greater respect for all you multi-kid parents out there (major props go to my cousin, who’s gone onto number four and counting). After all we’ve been through with our first – the nannies, the colic, the torticollis, the demoralizing search for an affordable kindergarten (worth it in every way, of course)– having yet another go at it remains as daunting as ever.

But I trust in many ways it won’t be as difficult. As one friend who’s expecting a little baby brother for her four-year-old reassuringly puts it: “This time around we are more confident as parents and almost revel in the possibility of being able to bring this one up with the bare minimum … Just do it – it is easier the second time around.”