As China’s population drops for third year, officials heavily pressure couples to have children

The population rate in China has fallen for the third year in a row, and CCP government officials are still resorting to coercive tactics related to reproduction — but after decades of insisting upon a One Child Policy, officials are now invasively pressuring women to have more children.

Last year, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that the population had fallen by over two million, with more deaths reported than births. Now, another year later, the trend has continued, for the third consecutive year. According to NPR, the population declined by over one million people, and the gender imbalance in China (due to an ingrained preference for boys over girls) has likewise continued to grow since 1980, when China enacted its now-rescinded One Child Policy with the help of the United Nations Population Fund and the International Planned Parenthood Fund.

Anyone who violated the policy was punished; on the more lenient side, families were merely fined. However, some visibly pregnant women were literally dragged off the streets, their children forcibly aborted. A cultural preference for sons quickly led to a gender imbalance resulting in millions of missing girls today, as people sought sex-selective abortions if pregnant with girls instead of boys. This imbalance further contributed to an epidemic of human trafficking and the highest suicide rate among women in the world. Still today, the population consists of 104.34 men to every 100 women, according to NPR. One-fifth of the population is aged 60 or over, and getting older, which is straining the government’s health care and pension systems, leading to desperate attempts to boost fertility rates — like subsidizing IVF.

According to the New York Times, those desperate efforts even include officials’ invasive phone calls to women, either urging them to have children or tracking the dates of their last menstrual periods. Some women have reported that government officials showed up at their homes unannounced, asking when they intended to get pregnant. “When they came to my home, that was really ridiculous,” 28-year-old Yumi Yang told the Times. “I felt a little disgusted.”

Zhang Rongxing, 38, experienced similar pressure. A mom of two, she said she was contacted by government officials both by phone and in-person at her home, asking her if she intended to have a third child.

READ: China introduces new initiatives to boost birth rate… but critics are skeptical

Additionally, the government is partnering with colleges and universities to spread propaganda about the “positive view of marriage and childbearing.” President Xi Jinping considers childbirth a national priority, and a way for women to “always walk with the party.” A press release from a government-run family planning association in Mudanjiang said, “Some people believe that marriage and childbirth are only private matters, and up to each individual. This view is wrong and one-sided.”

In Miyun, a district of Beijing, a 500-person propaganda team is accused of having contacted “suitably aged” couples at least six times.

Once women do become pregnant, the government remains involved. Women are instructed to register their pregnancies at government-run community health centers, and government officials contact women throughout their pregnancies. “They say things like, I see that you’re due for an exam,” said 34-year-old Yang Yingying.

Professor Wang Feng, a demography expert at the University of California, Irvine, told the New York Times that this all proves the mentality around fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth has not actually changed since the One Child Policy was rescinded. “It’s exactly the same mentality as when they implemented birth controls,” Wang said. “The government is, I would say, totally oblivious of how society has moved beyond them.”