It's just more a gesture than anything. 3600 a month maybe help but a year lol. I think they just assume anyone live in minimum wage, and minimum wage in China has stalled for years.
China demographics thread.
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I don't know, I'm not proposing solutions but recognizing what likely won't be solutions. Fundemental social reality is all of human civilization until recently was sustained by having 2+ kids. Historically not hedging with 2+ is existentially / financially punitive if one wants to grow old. That incentive structure works. Much wealthier per capita countries, as in historically wealthy, have so far failed to demonstrate nativist pronatal policy alternative. IMO it's not doable unless subsect of population embrace religious zealotry tier of pronatalism which is long term worse than immigration. PRC has the benefit of a few generations of <2 TFR headroom as part of process to transition to less population baseline - IMO PRC @ 1.4B overpopulated relative to land mass (only 1/3 of PRC is really life sustaining), there's time to ramp up policy to nudge towards 1.3-1.5 TFR over a few generations for PRC to settle at like 800m by 2100. But at some point before that society needs to be able to demographically sustain at ~2 TFR if society doesn't want to go immigration route or gov needs to start incubinating bodies. All the quibbling over policies to potentially increase TFR by a few decimal points, i.e. childless -> 1 child buys a few extra decades, but I think the policies to get from 1 to 2 kids is going to be much more difficult. You can probably incentivize a lot of couples to want to have a kid, it's going to be hard to get every couple to NEED to have 2+ kids and mathematically to sustain demographic pyramid you NEED 2+ TFR.
The solution is the successful completion of the Gilgamesh Project.
No one is going to be able to get TFR back to 2. That means for every woman who doesn't have kids, you need another woman to have 4 kids. That will never happen again -- it's too easy to not have kids and borderline impossible to have 4 kids these days.
The only solution is to make people live longer, much longer, and stay in working health, so you don't constantly need a large amount of births to counteract deaths.
Human civilization has about 50 years to figure out amortality before our society gets too old to make breakthroughs.
IMO solution, without depending on theoretic breakthroughs, transiently authoritorian, with some historic precedence / existing state institution / cultural memory is birth quotas + state orphanages to sustain demographic pyramid. PRC in 90s with mass migrant workforce transition had something like 20m boarding school students, 10-20% of student body depending on urban / rural. State was already raising a lot of kids, state can again, but need surrogates obligation to generate bodies.
AI math that I'm not going to double check but assume correct:
- Goal: maintain 800m demographic pyramid
- Assuming: 80 year life span
- need: 10m annual births
- Assume positive policies: raise TFR to 1.5 = 7m annual birth
- State "incentivizes/compels/coerces" 3m births for orphanage system
- Orphanage system size raise 3m x 18 years = 54m, ~3x peak PRC boarding school in 90s when PRC had 5%/15% (ppp) of per capita resources
- Throw in some genetic modifications to bias female birth selection to increase available surrogates (i.e. 60% female = "on'y" 40% particpation rate)
- 5000 usd per kid / year (5x gdp percapita of 90s) = ~250B program / 1.5% of GDP.
That's on paper workable state demographic management system. How you incentivize women to surrogate as social obligation and balance men social obligation (i.e. need to give up same amount of years/opportunties if not more) is up to details. Something like women turn 19, free tuition / boarding / i.e. best conditions for teritiary / discount / priority / upgrade on everything, spend 6 years vs 4 for schooling. Squeeze out a baby while pressure low, career effect minimum, get to enjoy years of tier1 service (i.e. hsr upgrades to first class) per child to incentivize / hook when women young / have access to least resources. Activate some maternal attachment - some single moms who don't want to keep babies experience attachment shift, more likely to have kids later. Men can make up geriatric end of social service spectrum - have to spend proportional time/energy taking care of elderly, every 6 months of school, men spends 3 month contributing to senior care. Implementation phase also potentially stretches out workforce entrance = mitigate ongoing issue of accomodating for millions of youth teritary. Basically equalizes career penalty for women so both genders start workforce same time. Also need to be extremely punitive towards those who don't contribute to system.
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China's government is not a direct democracy (aka "authoritarian" according to Western propaganda), but it's not omnipotent, and absolutely has to take public opinion into account.
Your proposal is so far beyond the pale that no sane Chinese government official or party leader would go anywhere close to it. Neither the state or the populace will accept this level of intrusion into private affairs.
I stand by my statement before -- there is no practical way to raise the TFR to 2.0. The only solution is a cure for mortality.
Distinction between executable vs speculative. "Curing mortality" is one hell of a solution bullet point. A sane CCP with state capacity also wouldn't allow an absolute TFR 1-1.5ish demographic collapse over multiple generations that dramatically undermines PRC comprehensive power in 100 years. Maybe mortality is easy to solve, or maybe it's harder than changing public opinion. I wager you can scare population into giving 2% of their lifespan with proper indoctorination.
Maybe source from artificial wombs. Maybe popualtion only partially nativist, and you have to import 3 million surrogates from developing countries (read africa) and pay them 20k usd, i.e. 10 year income. State orphange for 50m is doable component. Really it's about sourcing 3m surrogate new births per year (assume domestic TFR can be raised to 1.5), which... tbh there's probably ~1b global poor women to build industry off, but it will get... geopolitical, meanwhile 30% of mix raced Chinese is going to get... inflammatory (or not). At end of day, no avoiding 2+ TFR, no avoiding that PRC population base, need millions of excess babies in perpituity... somehow.
Maybe source from artificial wombs. Maybe popualtion only partially nativist, and you have to import 3 million surrogates from developing countries (read africa) and pay them 20k usd, i.e. 10 year income. State orphange for 50m is doable component. Really it's about sourcing 3m surrogate new births per year (assume domestic TFR can be raised to 1.5), which... tbh there's probably ~1b global poor women to build industry off, but it will get... geopolitical, meanwhile 30% of mix raced Chinese is going to get... inflammatory (or not). At end of day, no avoiding 2+ TFR, no avoiding that PRC population base, need millions of excess babies in perpituity... somehow.
I don't think the first 9 months is the big problem, its the following 18~25 years which is stressful for parents.
This is why i think artificial wombs won't fix this social economic problem.
It might be an option for the top 5% of society.
I can't imagine a society where entire generations have no birth parents and are instead born in a plastic bag full of nutrient fluids, it would be more of a seismic shift in culture then just getting people to have more kids...
That's means all people have only one common parent: the State. Just imagine our society is one huge orphanage and it may be compeletely fine.
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