As deaths have outpaced births in China, India overtook it as the world’s most populous country in 2023.
The effect of the tax on encouraging higher fertility would be limited, said Qian Cai, director of the Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia.
“For couples who do not want children or do not want additional children, a 13 per cent tax on contraceptives is unlikely to influence their reproductive decisions, especially when weighed against the far higher costs of raising a child,” she said.
Still, imposing the tax was “only logical”, said Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“They used to control the population, but now they are encouraging people to have more babies; it is a return to normal methods to make these products ordinary commodities,” Yi said.
As is true in most places, most responsibility for birth control in China falls to women. Condoms are used by only 9 per cent of couples, with 44.2 per cent using intrauterine devices and 30.5 per cent female sterilisation, followed by 4.7 per cent male sterilisation, according to research released by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2022. The rest use the pill or other methods.
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Given the authorities’ longstanding invasive approach to their personal lives and bodies, some women are offended by the effort to again influence their personal choices about childbearing.
“It is a disciplinary tactic, a management of women’s bodies and my sexual desire,” said Zou Xuan, a 32-year-old teacher in Pingxiang in China’s southern province of Jiangxi.
There is no official data on the scale of China’s annual condom consumption and estimates vary. A report released by IndexBox, an international market intelligence platform, said China consumed 5.4 billion condoms in 2020, marking the 11th straight year of increase.
Experts have expressed worries that reduced condom use could add to public health risks.
“Higher prices may reduce access to contraceptives among economically disadvantaged populations, potentially leading to increases in unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Those outcomes could, in turn, lead to more abortions and higher healthcare costs,” Cai said.
The move aligns with Beijing’s effort to get families to have more children after decades of limiting most to one child.Credit: Bloomberg
China has one of the world’s highest figures for abortions, with 9 million to 10 million annually from 2014 to 2021, according to its National Health Commission. Experts say the actual number could be higher, with some women seeking treatment at underground clinics. China stopped publishing its abortion data in 2022.
Sexually transmitted infections have also been rising, despite a decrease during the COVID-19 pandemic years, with over 100,000 gonorrhea patients and 670,000 syphilis patients in 2024, according to data from the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration.
The number of patients living with AIDS and HIV infections has also been rising, especially among older Chinese, reaching about 1.4 million in 2024.
AP
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