China: Leaked Plan Reveals Bid To Get Officials To Have More Children

^{Photo by Brian Matangelo on Unsplash}

A leaked internal draft document from the municipal health authority in the southeastern Chinese city of Quanzhou floating measures to encourage officials and government employees to have three children to boost flagging birth rates has sparked heated debate on social media.

The document, which circulated online in the form of a screenshot before being identified as a leaked draft by the Quanzhou Municipal Health Commission, lists a number of ways being considered by city officials to “organize and implement the three-child policy.”

China scrapped its policy limiting most couples to just one child in 2015, following decades of human rights abuses, including forced late-term abortions and sterilizations, as well as widespread monitoring of women’s fertility by officials.

Couples were then limited to two children, but by 2020, the fertility rate stood at around 1.3 children per woman in 2020, compared with the 2.1 children per woman needed for the population to replace itself, and the limit was raised to three in May 2021.

Yet the people who do most of the mental, physical and...