What's startling is a graph showing that China's birthrate had already been dropping drastically, and there may have been no need to interfere. Now it's coming back to bite them.
Three Is Best: How China’s Family Planning Propaganda Has Changed
By Isabelle Qian and Pablo Robles
For decades, China harshly restricted the number of children couples could have, arguing that everyone would be better off with fewer mouths to feed. The government’s one-child policy was woven into the fabric of everyday life, through slogans on street banners and in popular culture and public art.
Now, faced with a shrinking and aging population, China is using many of the same propaganda channels to send the opposite message: Have more babies.
The government has also been offering financial incentives for couples to have two or three children. But the efforts have not been successful. The birthrate in China has fallen steeply, and last year was the lowest since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Instead of enforcing birth limits, the government has shifted gears to promote a “pro-birth culture,” organizing beauty pageants for pregnant women and producing rap videos about the advantages of having children...
The propaganda effort has been met with widespread ridicule. Critics have regarded the campaign as only the latest sign that policymakers are blind to the increasing costs and other challenges people face in raising multiple children.
They have also mocked the recent messaging for the obvious regulatory whiplash after decades of limiting births with forced abortions and hefty fines. Between 1980 and 2015, the year the one-child policy officially ended, the Chinese government used extensive propaganda to warn that having more babies would hinder China’s modernization.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/09/world/asia/china-childbirth-propaganda.html