China is facing a serious crisis as its birth rate has dropped to one of the lowest in the world. In 2024, China’s fertility rate was only 1.2 children per woman, well below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 that would keep the population stable. In contrast, countries like the United States have a fertility rate around 1.6, and India’s is above 2.0. Experts warn that if current trends continue, China’s population could fall from over 1.4 billion today to less than 800 million by the end of the century, a dramatic decline that would reshape its economy and society.

The Legacy of the One-Child Policy

China’s current crisis has deep roots in the one-child policy that the Communist government imposed from 1980 to 2015. For 35 years, families in China were allowed to have only one child, a policy enforced with brutal measures like forced abortions and sterilizations. Officials took these steps in the name of controlling population growth, but they left deep scars across Chinese society.

The one-child policy was driven by the government’s belief that it could manage every aspect of life through centralized planning. Socialism, by its very nature, tries to shape culture from the top down, telling people how many children to have, where to work, and even who they should marry. But as history shows, culture cannot be engineered like a factory assembly line.

The policy also created a dangerous gender imbalance. Families often preferred boys over girls, leading to millions of “missing” girls through sex-selective abortions and abandonment. By 2000, China’s sex ratio at birth had risen to almost 120 boys for every 100 girls. This has created a “bachelor crisis” today, with millions of men who cannot find wives, adding to social tensions and even driving up crime in some areas.

The trauma of the one-child policy still shapes the way young Chinese people see marriage and children. Many women today remember how their mothers and grandmothers were forced to hide pregnancies or have abortions to avoid punishment. A woman named Yao recalled how her mother had to flee to a distant village during her third pregnancy to avoid a forced abortion, leaving Yao to be raised by her grandparents. “When I think about having children, all I can remember is how my mother had to hide, how our family was torn apart,” Yao said.

Socialism’s Destruction of Family Life

Socialism has always promised to build a better society by controlling private life. In China, this meant using harsh rules to decide who could have children and how many they could have. But as with all socialist experiments, the government’s plans backfired. The one-child policy did slow population growth, but it also broke families apart and left young people wary of starting families of their own.

Today, the Chinese government is trying to reverse course, but it is still using the same top-down methods. From cash payments for newborns to extending maternity leave and expanding childcare services, the government believes it can buy back the trust it lost. But for many Chinese women, these policies feel like empty promises that do not address the real reasons why they do not want to have children.

Pan Wang, a sociologist at the University of New South Wales, said that “women are rejecting marriage because of the unequal distribution of domestic work, male chauvinism, and intense social pressure.” She added that the expectation to care for both their own children and their aging parents has made many women decide to stay single. “There is a trending phrase on Weibo, ‘detox from boys and focus on yourself,’” said a woman named Xuanzi, showing how young women are choosing self-growth over traditional family roles.

China’s Efforts to Boost Births

The government has introduced many new policies to try to boost the birth rate. In January 2025, Hohhot in Inner Mongolia announced a subsidy of 10,000 yuan, or about $1,393, to couples who have their first child. In Tianmen, parents who have a second or third child can receive housing coupons worth up to $25,000 and monthly cash payments until the child turns three.

One mother in Tianmen said the subsidies had helped her family. “Tianmen’s policy is great,” she said. “It has solved my housing problem because I have many children.” However, experts like Shuang Chen at the London School of Economics warn that these efforts only encourage families who already wanted to have more children to do so sooner, and that the effects will not last.

The government also announced another desperate change in childbirth care. By the end of 2025, all large hospitals in China will be required to provide epidural pain relief during childbirth. As of now, only 30 percent of women in China receive anesthesia during labor, compared to 67 percent in the United States. Health officials said that hospitals will need to create dedicated procedure rooms that meet strict hygiene standards and strengthen coordination between anesthesia and obstetrics departments.

The Barriers to Parenthood

Even with these measures, many young Chinese say they do not want to have children because of the high cost of raising a family and long working hours. In major cities, the price of housing and education is overwhelming, while job insecurity and intense work pressure discourage many from starting families.

In 2024, marriages in China dropped by 20 percent, the lowest level since record-keeping began in 1986. About 42 percent of young Chinese are not even looking for a relationship, according to a 2022 report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Dating apps, once seen as a way to connect people, have left many young people feeling like commodities in a marketplace. “Dating apps have made us into products, constantly advertising ourselves to potential suitors,” said Yan, a bisexual university student. But as many users discover, the endless choices on apps can lead to “networked loneliness,” where people are connected to many but close to no one.

A Shrinking Population, A Shrinking Future

China’s population fell by 1.39 million in 2024, the third year in a row that deaths outpaced births. The number of deaths was 10.93 million, while births rose slightly to 9.54 million. But the slight rise in births is not enough to offset the growing number of deaths, and the number of women of childbearing age is projected to drop sharply in the coming decades.

Yun Zhou, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan, said that “much of China’s population decline is rooted in entrenched structural reasons.” She explained that without major changes like a stronger social safety net and true gender equality, “the trend of population decline cannot be reversed.”

The Limits of Control

The one-child policy was the ultimate example of a government trying to force its vision of society onto people’s private lives. Now, decades later, the scars of that policy are everywhere: in the gender imbalance that leaves many men without wives, in the shrinking population of young workers, and in the deep distrust that many women feel toward having children.

As China’s leaders scramble to fix the problem, they are learning a lesson that socialist governments everywhere have had to learn the hard way: you cannot control culture from the top down.

ACZ Editor: More bluntly, socialism doesn’t work, it is always a disaster. Freedom is not always perfect but it is better than any of the alternatives.