China is ending a decades-long tax exemption on contraceptives to push up its birth rate. Experts say the change could leave women and young people more vulnerable.
Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-04/china-add-tax-on-condoms-and-contraceptives-to-boost-birth-rate/106097254
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Make a livable world and people will want to live in it.
Too bad that that’s not profitable in the short term. It used to be just less profitable than exploitation, but it was ignored long enough that it’s now unprofitable, because we ruined everything so much that we need to invest into fixing it first.
36 years of government policy with harsh penalties for having more than one child doesn’t disappear quickly (1979-2015). They’ve trained two generations not to have kids, and the looming global climate disaster affects everyone worldwide. And while I haven’t looked into it, I think it’s a safe bet that in large Chinese cities the cost of living has also outpaced wages, like in nearly every other major city in the world. None of that is conducive to wanting to have kids.
Capitalisms only solution to problems is to continue the beating until morale improves, as long as it’s deemed the most profitable.
Literally no government is actually trying to improve the quality of life of its people in any tangible way that addresses the reasons they choose to not bring a child into this world.
sodomy is still free though yeah?
Economically stable people who feel safe in their society choose to have children.
China has not been sharing youth unemployment numbers for a year now, after they started approaching 20% unemployment for the 18-30 age range.
Not with climate change looming. I have all the money I need still won’t get kids.
Economically stable people who feel safe in their society choose to have children
This logically makes sense, and may have even been something that you’ve experienced yours either directly or second hand via friends/family, but it’s not present in the data.
There’s a very strong negative correlation between education and income vs birth rate. As people make more money and/or attain higher levels of education they have fewer kids. My theory is that this is due to a combination of reliance on direct family for labor on a homestead/farmstead, sex ed, and access to contraceptives. Kids are also a large time/emotional/financial commitment and with our modern emphasis on “self sufficency” this places a heavy burden on parents. Some countries have tried softening this blow, but it hasn’t changed their birthday trend.
There’s a very strong negative correlation between education and income vs birth rate
There isn’t causation here.
What you are seeing here is that the more highly educated people exist, our birth rate goes down, BECAUSE they can see it’s a bad idea.
Forcing the births of kids who can not be provided for is not the statistical.“own” you think it is.
I totally agree that forcing people to have kids is a horrible idea.
Sure, wealthy people can easily prevent pregnancy while poor peoply have higher risk of having unwanted pregnancy. Sounds extremely smart and well thought through…
They want bodies for the machine
Welcome to China!
Seems pretty capitalist of them ngl
Whaaaat? Charging more for condoms to force the poor to have babies to have more slaves in the factories? That’s just regular (China brand) communism
The Chinese government has been an unholy combination of authoritarianism and brutal state sponsored capitalism since deng at least
Chinese women should just refuse to have sex with men.
Women could change the world overnight if they’d ban together on denying sex. There were two warring tribes in Africa (last century, I forget) where the woman came together and said no poonanny until you boys are at peace. Instant peace.
It’s also the plot of the classic Greek play Lysistrata, wherein the eponymous protagonist incites a sex strike to end the Peloponnesian War.
I mean sure, if half the population agrees on anything it gets a lot easier to accomplish. Good luck convincing them though
I don’t know how much they plan to increase the cost of a condom, but I’d wager that it will be cheaper than 18 years of expenses.
The US birth rate and china’s birth rate are shockingly similar. I love how we point to their one child policy for their issues while ignoring what both populations are saying. Turns out run away capitalism is too blame. The one child policy doesn’t explain why both populations millennials and gen xers are not interested in even having relationships, let alone having children. Both sets say the same things. Not enough money, too much work, worries about climate, and fear of world conflicts. Both China and US people need to realize both our governments are more likely to role back women’s rights to increase birth rates opposed to emancipating their people.
