China encourages ‘sweet love, marriage and childbirth’ amid low fertility rate

China’s government is attempting to promote “good fertility” and “sweet love” as the nation reckons with declining marriage and fertility rates.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Chinese city of Xian encouraged “sweet love, marriage and childbirth” in texts that coincided with the culture’s Valentine’s Day on Aug. 22. The media outlet China Newsweek also posted on its Weibo: “Continue the blood of China and share the important task of rejuvenation.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, government data showed a fertility rate of just 1.09 last year, prompting comparison to the aging society in Japan (1.26). That’s down from 1.3 in 2020 and well below the 2.1 reportedly needed to keep the population stable. The communist government ironically aimed for decades at getting its families to keep their number of children to just one. The draconian policy resulted in forced abortions and has been rolled back in recent years. 

Declining population and marriage rates have led to interventions like government-backed fertility treatments and public relations campaigns. Even Chinese companies have started getting involved by offering cash incentives for employees to bear children.

As Live Action News previously reported, the regime recently posted its lowest number of marriages since it started recording the figure in 1986:

According to The New York Times, the prices may exceed $50,000. Officials have reportedly worried about the impact of high prices with some intervening in price negotiations and, in at least one town, imposing caps on the cost. 

In March, the outlet highlighted an event in the town of Daijiapu where women were gathered to sign a pledge to reject high bride prices. 

Chinese University of Hong Kong sociology professor Yuying Tong said the caili system “has broken many families.” She said that “parents spend all their money and go financially bankrupt just to find a wife for their son.”

One of the impediments to marriages has been the large sums prospective husbands are expected to offer women – something The New York Times suggested might be due to the gender imbalance created by the nation’s one child policy. Rural areas, for example, reportedly have 19 million more men than women. Prices, according to the Times, can reach as high as $50,000.

The government has considered various proposals for reversing population decline and in at least one province, a single woman was able to access in vitro fertilization.

That’s after years of wiping out large swaths of generations, preventing an untold number of children from being born by the millions of human beings aborted in the communist society. The Chinese government reported in 2013 that doctors had performed 330 million abortions and 196 million sterilizations.

Today, China has reported in 2022 its first population decline in six decades.