Since the first day of the year, Chinese people have been paying a special tax of 13% on the sale of contraceptives, and daycare services are now exempt from taxes. China is trying to recover from decades of “one-child policy”, but it is one of the most expensive countries in the world to raise children.
The world’s second largest economy is doing everything it can to increase birth rates. The reform of the country’s tax system, announced at the end of last year, eliminates several exemptions which had been in force since 1994, when China was still applying the , which lasted decades.
The measures also include exemption from value added tax for services related to weddings and elderly care. These changes are part of a broader effortwhich includes increasing paternity leave and granting cash bonuses.
The aging of the population and a slowing economy prompted Beijing to try encourage young Chinese people to get married and couples to have children. According to , official figures show that the Chinese population has decreased in the last three years.
Em 2024, 9.54 million babies were born in the country, around half of births registered a decade ago, the year in which China began to relax strict rules on birth number of children per family — which took the country into serious trouble.
Still, the tax on contraceptives, including condoms, pills and intrauterine devices, has raised some concerns about a possible increase in the number of unwanted pregnancies and HIV rates — in addition to being target of criticism and derision among Chinese.
There are those who say that it will take much more than raising the price of condoms to convince people to have children. A reseller suggested to store owners, ironically, to stock the product before the price increase.
A social media user commented, in the same tone: “I’m going to buy it now condoms for a lifetime“; another wrote that people know well difference between the price of a condom and the cost of raising a child.
According to a report by Beijing’s YuWa Population Research Institute, published in 2024, China is one of the countries where it is most expensive to raise children.
According to the study, these costs are aggravated by school fees in an academic environment highly competitive and the difficulties women face in reconciling career and motherhood,
It was caused, in large part, by a serious housing crisis that affected family savingswhich generated, especially among young people, a feeling of uncertainty and lack of confidence in the future.
“I have a son and I don’t want any more“, contou to BBC Daniel Luo36 years old, resident in Henan province, in the east of the country. “It’s like when the price of the metro increases. If it rises by one or two yuan, people don’t change their habits. You still have to take the metro, right?”
Luo says that not worried about the price increase. “A box of condoms could cost another five yuan, maybe ten, at most twenty (about 0.60 to 2.40 euros. In a year, it’s only a few hundred yuan, which is perfectly affordable.”
But for other people, cost can be an issue. It is the case that Rosy Zhaoa young woman who lives in the city of Xi’an, in central China, who considers that increase the cost of contraception, which is a necessitycan take students or people with financial difficulties “taking risks”.
For Zhao, this is the “potentially most dangerous outcome” of this policy. And experts appear to be divided on the objective of tax reform.
The idea that increasing the tax on condoms will have an impact on birth rates is “overvalue to measure“, says the demographer Yi Fuxianfrom the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the USA, who believes that China is willing to tax “everything you can” – for facing an internal market in recession and an increase in public debt.
The revenue generated by Chinese VAT is around 900 billion euroswhich represented close to 40% of the country’s total tax revenue last year.
The introduction of the condom tax is “symbolic” and reflects Beijing’s attempt to encourage people to boost the country’s “surprisingly low” fertility rates, according to Henrietta Levinfrom the US Center for International and Strategic Studies.
For Levin, which complicates efforts is that many policies and subsidies will have to be implemented by provincial governments, which are in debt. And it is not known for sure whether they will have enough resources to do so.
The Chinese government’s incentives for people to have children too run the risk of having the opposite effectif people feel that the State is being “too intrusive” in a deeply personal decision, explains Levin.
Observers and women themselves say that the country’s male-dominated leadership does not understand the social changes underlying these deeper changes. And this It doesn’t just happen in China.
Western countries and even others in the region, such as the OEA, have had difficulties in increasing birth ratesand stop the aging of the population.
One of the reasons is the burden of child-rearing workwhich falls disproportionately on womenaccording to several studies. But there are other factors, such as the decline in marriages and even relationships.
According to Daniel Luo, the set of measures that China is adopting does not resolve the real problem: the way young people interact nowadays, increasingly avoiding genuine human connections.
The young man highlights the increased sales of sex toys in the country, a sign that “people they’re just trying to satisfy themselvesbecause interacting with another person has become a nuisance.”
“Young people today face a lot more stress of society than people did 20 years ago”, explains Luo. “It is true that, in material terms, they live better, but the expectations on them are much higher. Everyone is simply exhausted“.
