Financial Times on China trying to raise its birthrate. They're literally calling random women and telling them to reproduce.
Local governments are cold-calling married women to ask about their plans to have children and are handing out cash to parents to encourage them to have more than one child.
Universities have been asked to introduce so-called love courses for single students, and regular articles appear in state media about the benefits of having children....
In the meantime, married women in their 20s and early 30s across the country have been receiving calls from local officials asking about their plans to start a family, according to multiple people who spoke with the Financial Times and posts on social media.
In some instances, callers asked women to attend prenatal body checks. Other callers were more direct, offering subsidies to women who had more than one child.
They've co-opted "science" the way our government does when it wants something.
The personalised lobbying comes against a background of an intensified media campaign hailing the benefits of childbirth. In recent months, the state-run People’s Daily and Life Times have promoted scientific voices saying childbirth is good for the mother’s health and can even help prevent cancer and treat certain diseases.
A state-run publication by the National Health Commission in December called on universities to set up “marriage and love education courses” to encourage students to couple up.
“Universities are an important place for college students to fall in love,” it wrote, citing a survey that 57 per cent of students said they did not want to get into a relationship due to their heavy workload.
The article proposed that universities introduce courses on the theory of love and real-life case analysis to promote a “systematic knowledge of love and marriage”.
In the West, we think about encouraging women and couples to have children. In East Asia, even the pairing up part is hard.
China is our adversary, but good luck to them. This is a one of the most fundamental problems humanity is facing, and any major country solving it would be important for its own sake and an inspiration to others.
