China's population crisis is worsening the CCP's policies are weak & ineffective

The latest policy to encourage childbirth, the childcare subsidy, is merely a drop in the ocean.
Peter Chen's China Labor Forum 24 March 2026

Starting January 1, local governments began distributing a monthly childcare subsidy of 300 yuan.

This policy, launched by the central government in July last year, is the first nationwide childcare subsidy policy, providing families with infants aged 0 to 3 years with 3,600 yuan per year, up to a maximum of 10,800 yuan over three years.

In August, it was also announced that free preschool education would be gradually implemented, starting with free public kindergarten education for the year preceding primary school enrollment. It seems the authorities are attempting to use economic compensation to salvage the current severe population crisis.

On the surface, this seems to indicate that the CCP has finally realized the disaster caused by its decades-long population control policies, which were an integral part of the counter-revolution against the old "planned economy" in order to restore capitalism.

What impact will the new policy have?
According to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics, there will be only 7.92 million newborns in 2025, a 17% decrease from 9.54 million in 2024. The total fertility rate is below 1.0, far below the replacement level (i.e., an average of 2.1 children per woman).

Demographers are shocked by the 2025 figures. The last time China had such a low number of newborns was in 1738. The total population has declined for the fourth consecutive year, an unprecedented event for a country not currently experiencing war.

Pro-China commentators and journalists have touted the new subsidies and related measures, claiming they will reverse the crisis. However, the subsidy policy appears more like a "symbolic compensation" than a genuine systemic change, unlikely to shake the fundamental trend of China's continuously declining birth rate.

First, the childcare subsidy itself is a drop in the ocean. A monthly subsidy of 300 yuan is almost negligible compared to the thousands of yuan that urban families often spend on childcare.

Basic expenses such as formula, diapers, vaccines, childcare, and early education already far exceed the subsidy amount. Based on estimates of the average childcare cost for urban families in China, the average monthly expenditure for children aged 0 to 3 years is at least between 2,000 and 5,000 yuan, with the subsidy accounting for only 6% to 15% of the total expenditure.

Regarding the one-year free education in public kindergartens, the monthly fee for public kindergartens in China generally ranges from 300 to 1000 yuan. This means that theoretically, a one-time fee waiver could save a family approximately 3000 to 10000 yuan, but that's about it. This is only "theoretically," because many cash-strapped local governments have failed to provide subsidies, preventing kindergartens from waiving fees. Caixin.com reported last December that 20% of Chinese cities currently do not provide subsidies, and about 40% of cities only provide subsidies in certain areas.

In reality, the main problem with kindergartens in China is not the financial strain of public education, but rather the severe shortage of public resources. Nationwide, public kindergartens account for approximately 45-50%, while private kindergartens make up more than half. In first-tier cities (such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen), the proportion of public kindergartens is even lower, only around 30-40%. Taking Shenzhen as an example, approximately 500,000 children need to enroll in kindergarten each year, but public kindergartens can only cover about 200,000 places, leaving a shortage of about 300,000 places. This means that 60% of families have to choose private kindergartens. It's not just a matter of money.

However, the free kindergarten policy for one year does not include private schools, and private school fees are much more expensive than public schools, reaching 3,000-8,000 yuan per month. Nationwide, there is a shortage of approximately 6-8 million public school places. This means that most families cannot actually benefit from these places. Local governments often prioritize allocating limited public school places to local registered families, and migrant worker families from other areas are the most discriminated against.

Moreover, raising children involves more than just the initial years. In China, the average cost of raising a child to age 18 is 6.9 times the per capita GDP, ranking second in the world, only behind South Korea, which also has one of the lowest birth rates globally.

Shanghai has the highest cost nationwide, with an average of 1.01 million yuan required to raise a child from birth to age 18, followed by Beijing at 936,000 yuan. Therefore, current subsidies are merely a drop in the ocean and insufficient to change the current situation where people are unwilling to have children.

In fact, the population crisis cannot be solved simply by cash subsidies. Childbearing is part of a whole social ecosystem, primarily due to the three major burdens facing the Chinese people—housing, healthcare, and education—as well as multiple factors such as the workplace and gender equality. This is not purely an economic issue. Today, societal and family pressures particularly affect young women, but young men also experience these pressures, leading many to hesitate about having children. The harsh one-child policy implemented between 1980 and 2015 fundamentally changed attitudes towards small families and the existing social structure. The one-child policy severely suppressed the birth of female infants, resulting in the current "female shortage." Women aged 20-34 give birth to 85% of newborns in China, and this group is projected to decline from 105 million in 2025 to 58 million in 2050.

Since the restoration of capitalism in China, social welfare has been significantly weakened, with the abolition of widespread free public childcare and other welfare programs. During the same period, gender inequality in China has widened, workplace discrimination against women is widespread, and women face "maternity penalties" in the workplace, with pregnancy and childbirth often meaning career interruption and limited promotion.

These are the fundamental reasons why families are unwilling to have children. Internationally, declining birth rates are a common phenomenon in developed capitalist regions worldwide, and are even more severe in East Asia, where competition is fierce. Besides China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are also experiencing low birth rates. However, China's problem is more complex and sudden: aging before becoming wealthy.

What is the real solution?
Ultimately, reversing the population collapse requires comprehensive institutional reforms, including:
• Widespread and high-quality childcare services
• Comprehensive free education with sufficient school places
• Universal, high-quality, free healthcare from birth to old age
• Universal affordable housing
• Establishment of independent labor unions to fight for higher wages, genuine job security, elimination of workplace discrimination against women, and defense of women's rights and equal pay for equal work

Clearly, these measures would face fierce opposition from businesses and authorities in capitalist China, which is mired in a prolonged economic crisis. The subsidy policy had only been in effect for a short time when reports surfaced of "suspension or even forfeiture of subsidies for second and third children" in many areas.

Residents in Lu'an, Bengbu, Chuzhou, and Huainan in Anhui Province reported that their applications for bonuses were suddenly halted, and some subsidies already received were even being returned. This is strikingly similar to the situation with the "free preschool education" policy. The reason lies in the strained local finances; some regions have long been in arrears with civil servants' salaries or have had to borrow money to pay them, let alone provide birth incentives. The CCP prefers to invest its remaining funds in "stability maintenance," military spending, and building more aircraft carriers to demonstrate its imperialist prestige.

In fact, the reason the CCP is so worried about the population crisis now is because a declining population means there isn't enough working class to exploit. China's imperialist ambitions need a large number of "leeks" (victims) to fight against the United States in its imperialist struggle.

Therefore, only by overthrowing the CCP's capitalist dictatorship, establishing genuine workers' democracy, and achieving the aforementioned social security, where workers become the masters of society instead of being exploited, can families be encouraged to have children, and their decision to reproduce be completely free and not coerced by any ruler.

China's number of newborns in 2025 will be 7.9 million, the lowest in 300 years. The number of marriages has fallen from a peak of 13.47 million in 2013 to 6.5-7 million in 2025 (based on an estimate of 5.12 million in the first three quarters of that year).

China's total labor force has decreased from 940 million in 2012 to 870 million in 2025.

During the one-child policy period, it is estimated that more than 30 million female infants were aborted. The current male-to-female ratio is 104/100 (the male-to-female ratio for the population aged 0-14 is 114/100).

The annual child allowance of 3,600 yuan costs approximately 90 billion yuan. In comparison, internet censorship alone costs 45 billion yuan annually, and military spending reaches a staggering 1.78 trillion yuan.
https://chinaworker.info/zh-hant/2026/03/24/49012/

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