The Chinese government is testing out a new solution to falling birth rates: making sex more expensive.
Consumers will pay a 13% value-added tax on contraceptive drugs and products, including condoms, beginning Jan. 1, as part of China’s newly revised Value-Added Tax Law. Those products have been exempted from tax since 1993 as part of China’s one-child policy, which heavily penalized families for having more than one child from 1980 to 2015. As the country’s birth rate has fallen in recent years, the government has turned to seeking to boost birth rates with a range of incentives and subsidies.
Officially, the latest move has been framed as a “technical adjustment within a broader tax-system reform,” says Yuan Mei, assistant professor in the School of Economics at Singapore Management University. The focus has been about “administrative consistency rather than demographic goals.”
As China has shifted from fearing that rapid population growth in the 1970s would strain resources and hamper economic development to wanting to reverse falling birth rates, some experts say it is reasonable that the government’s policies reflect that change.
“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 Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Associated Press.
Under the one-child policy, families that had additional children faced hefty fines and at times forced abortions or sterilizations. Children born outside the plan were also often denied registration at birth, thus creating a generation of unregistered citizens who were unable to access healthcare services, enroll in public schools, or travel freely. The government lifted the birth limit to two children in 2015 and to three in 2021. China was surpassed by India in 2023 as the world’s most populous country, with the number of babies born in China dropping further from a 60-year-low of 14.7 million in 2019 to 9.5 million in 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Still, even as China’s population has fallen, contraception has largely been affordable and encouraged, with condoms selling for as cheap as $0.60 and available for free through some public health programs. Now, on social media, the tax has drawn criticism from some who say it punishes ordinary people, especially singles, who can’t afford to have a child.
Economic concerns
“I was so angry when I saw that condoms are going to be taxed and increase in price,” one user posted on RedNote. “Like—what, is it that easy to make money off us working people?! Even condoms are going to increase in price?!”
“I got so mad I placed a late-night order for the condom products I love… and accidentally stocked up way too much…” the post continued. Several others shared images online of their stockpiled condoms ahead of the tax increase.
“In the end, it’s always ordinary people who suffer,” another user posted.
“Now, not only can we not afford to have children, we can’t even afford to have sex,” another quipped.
“The tax itself is unlikely to have a noticeable effect on birth rates,” Mei tells TIME. “Decisions about having children in China today are shaped primarily by broader economic and lifestyle factors, such as the high cost of raising a child and the long working hours common in many urban sectors. These considerations tend to outweigh small changes in the price of contraceptives.”
Read More: China Is Desperate to Boost Its Low Birth Rates. It May Have to Accept the New Normal
The sentiment on social media has reflected that, as several users on RedNote and Weibo have commented that the tax will likely not be so effective at boosting birth rates, given that a small price increase on contraceptives is still cheaper than the cost of raising a child.
One user sardonically commented, “That’s alright, just a few cents more. That’s much less than the four-legged money-devouring beast.”
The government has rolled out incentives for prospective parents as part of its pro-natalist policies, including cash bonuses and longer parental leave. It is also introducing tax exemptions for child-care, elder-care, disability, and marriage-related services, beginning in January.
Even so, China remains one of the most expensive countries in the world to raise children relative to household income. A 2024 report from the YuWa Population Research Institute in Beijing found that the cost of raising a child until the age of 18 is more than 538,000 yuan ($76,000). China is also grappling with a sluggish economy: the country’s cost-of-living is easing alongside deflationary pressures and a drop in housing prices, but that also means many young people have struggled to get a job or are forced to accept low wages, while businesses have shuttered.
“Young people in China typically attribute their decision to have fewer children to these financial pressures and demanding work schedules, and they generally feel that measures reducing the cost and time burden of childrearing would have a much greater influence on their fertility choices than adjustments to the tax treatment of contraceptive products,” Mei says.
At the same time, the number of single-person households has risen significantly, as young professionals living in dense cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen who are used to working long hours spend more time on their own. There are around 240 million single adults and 125 million single-person households—nearly a quarter of the total—in China, Subramania Bhatt, chief executive officer of market researcher China Trading Desk, previously told TIME.
Health concerns
Experts have raised concerns that the price increase could lead to more sexually transmitted diseases and poorer family planning—and disproportionately affect lower-income individuals and families.
There were more than 670,000 patients with syphilis and 100,000 with gonorrhea in China last year, according to the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration. The number of patients living with AIDS and HIV infections reached 1.4 million last year, an increase of 65,000 from the year before. The incidence of sexually transmitted diseases has risen over the years, especially among 15 to 24 year olds, according to a study published this year.
“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 health-care costs,” Qian Cai, director of the Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia, told the AP.
One user wrote in a comment on RedNote: “You think the HIV infection rate isn’t high enough?”
Other users shared concerns that the price increase on contraceptives would also hurt people with medical issues like endometriosis. One user commented on RedNote: “Contraceptives are not just for preventing pregnancy, we also need to take it to regulate our menstrual cycle. Can’t the tax increase take women into consideration?”
China has also introduced measures to curb the number of abortions not deemed “medically necessary,” as part of guidelines announced in 2021. The country has recorded between 9 to 10 million abortions every year from 2014 to 2021 (the last year with published abortion data), according to the National Health Commission. Some experts have raised concerns about the potential for more unplanned pregnancies, especially among school-aged youth.
Some have complained that the new pro-natalist policies—from reducing the number of abortions to removing the tax exemption on contraceptives—is yet another form of control on the bodies and desires of Chinese people, especially women, after decades of the invasive one-child policy.
Zhou Yun, an assistant professor of social demography and family sociology at the University of Michigan, told ABC that the tax increase is political. “Heterosexual marriage is privileged, women’s labour at home is expected … and those people outside the structure of heterosexual marriage are rendered invisible,” she said.
“It is a disciplinary tactic, a management of women’s bodies and my sexual desire,” 32-year-old Zou Xuan told the AP.
“Condoms are not a lever for boosting birth rates,” one user wrote on Weibo. “Stop using people’s lives as test subjects.” These policies “only make me dislike, even resent, the idea of getting married or having children more and more,” another wrote.
“Low fertility rates and women having little desire to marry or have children—does anyone seriously think it’s because condoms exist? Because of abortions? Because of sterilization, or this or that? Shouldn’t we be asking why women don’t want to—why they’re unwilling, uninterested?” another user wrote on Weibo in 2021 after the government unveiled its comprehensive pro-natalist strategy. “Honestly, I hope even more women don’t want to and won’t do it. Maybe the pressure that creates will finally force improvements in women’s living conditions.”
“Though judging by how things are going, a ‘singlehood tax’ will probably show up first,” they added.
