Members of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), which began its annual session this week, are considering urging couples to take fertility tests before getting married among other policies to boost the national birth rate, state media reported on Thursday.
The state-run Global Times listed several proposals floating around in the NPC this week to help Chinese families have more babies. It cited a political adviser identified as Lu Weiying as suggesting that companies give young childless employees time off to undergo a variety of medical tests to ensure their fertility before they get married.
“Political advisor Lu Weiying … proposed increasing leave days to allow young people to undergo premarital examinations and fertility assessments prior to marriage,” the state outlet shared. “Lu told the Global Times that she suggested women should undergo a fertility assessment when getting married so that they can better plan for childbirth while balancing career development.”
“Echoing Lu’s suggestion on understanding one’s fertility status, NPC deputy Ruan Xiangyan emphasized the protection of fertility health throughout life, not just for women at childbearing age, but also for children and men,” the report continued.
The Global Times did not elaborate on the reasoning for fertility tests or what the government would suggest to couples where one of the two parties was found to have fertility complications.
The dire birth rate situation has led the Communist Party to take invasive measures into people’s personal lives in the hope of pressuring couples into having children. In one alarming example, the South China Morning Post reported in October that Chinese women were using social media to complain that local Communist Party officials were calling them unexpectedly to ask them invasive questions about their menstrual cycle and other private bodily details, a practice referred to as “fertility call checks.” One woman relayed that a government worker called her, asked if she was pregnant, and began to ask for details of her last menstrual cycle when she said she was not. The worker suggesting setting up a reminder call from the government for when she is believed to be ovulating.
“Some people believe that marriage and childbirth are only private matters, and up to each individual. This view is wrong and one-sided,” a Chinese propaganda post declared.
Birth rates are falling in the six most populated countries in the world, though at different speeds. This graphic shows the annual births per 1,000 people in the world’s six largest countries by population. Data source: United Nations World Population Prospects. (Graphic by Visual Capitalist via Getty Images)
The policy of harassing women for intimate details of their menstrual cycle does not appear to have at press time made any meaningful changes to China’s birth rate, although it was implemented recently so that trend may change. Experts believe that stress can be a factor contributing to infertility, however, as stress can contribute to mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression that are associated with higher levels of infertility.
The NPC is China’s federal-level lawmaking body, which meets only once a year and is completely dominated by the Communist Party. Its primary task is codifying edicts already imposed by genocidal dictator Xi Jinping and, in cases where Xi has commanded his Party to find solutions to problems in an open-ended manner, present possible plans of action.
China is facing a historic decline in the national birth rate, coupled with a rapidly aging population and plummeting rates of marriage. The Chinese National Bureau of Statistics revealed in January that it documented a decline in the national population in 2024, the third year in a row it had done so, and that only 9.54 million babies were born that year. The birth rate increased modestly from 2023, when the government claimed 9.02 million babies were born. The National Bureau of Statistics found that 10.93 million people died in 2024.
The country is currently believed to be home to almost 35 million more men than women, meaning bleak prospects of marriage for many men – bleaker when taking into consideration women outside of child-bearing age and those who choose not to marry at all. The gender imbalance and birth rate decline is the product of the Communist Party’s “One-Child Policy,” which for decades made it illegal for couples to have more than one son or daughter. The government enforced this policy through forced abortions and infanticide; Beijing boasts that the policy “prevented” 400 million people from being born.
China ended the “one-child policy” in 2016 but still limited families to having only two children. That number was expanded to three in 2021, though statistics found no significant increase in the nation’s birth rate between the one- and two-child policy periods and only a modest increase after the implementation of the “three-child policy.”
Population decline is one of several factors severely endangering the health of the Chinese economy. Chinese state media identified policies to revive the economy and attract foreign investment as a primary work topic for the NPC and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a thousands-strong advisory body, during their annual “two sessions” this month.
Other suggestions identified by the Global Times on Thursday include mandating that companies offer longer periods of maternity and paternity leave to their employees as well as the creation of a federal “maternity insurance fund” to help new parents financially. Ruan, the NPC lawmaker quoted as entertaining the idea of premarital fertility checks, also raised the possibility of the government mandating that doctors offering patients radiotherapy or chemotherapy inform patients of the potential risks to their fertility before receiving the care in question.
