China to impose 13% tax on condoms aiming to boost falling birthrate
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Beijing: China is set to impose huge tax on condoms and other contraceptives as the country is facing falling birthrate from its stringent one-child policy, The Guardian reported.
A 13% value-added tax (VAT) is to be slapped on condoms and contraceptives from January 1 onwards alongside its plans to modernize tax laws.
It seems the country’s communist government is concerned about falling birth rate after ‘imposing strict one-child policy for more than 30 years’.
Some provinces offer discounts on IVF treatments and cash subsidies for extra children while raising the number of children permitted for a couple from one to three.
Encouraging young people to marry, some local governments offer extra days of paid leave for newlyweds.
Increased tax on condoms and contraceptives has faced ridicule on social media with one user writing on Weibo ‘What is wrong with modern society? They are truly going to extreme lengths just to make us have children’.
Meanwhile, the government this year allocated 90bn yuan as childcare subsidy nationwide, thus annually offering 3,600 yuan for each child aged under three.
Alongside, the government said that the country’s national healthcare insurance programme would cover all expenses related to childbirth.
Despite these measures, the birthrate saw only a slight increase with reports putting it at 6.77 per 1,000 people in 2024.
It is reported that China’s population has been shrinking over the past three years, given the death rate of aging people.
As strategies showing little results, local government officers are intrusively making phone calls seeking details from people about their menstrual cycles and childbearing plans.
In one instance this month, women in south-west China’s Yunnan province were asked to report the date of their last period to the local authorities in what authorities claimed for identifying ‘pregnant and expectant mothers’.
A user on social media responded to the report writing ‘Today they require all women to report the time of their period, tomorrow it will be reporting the time of sexual intercourse, the day after tomorrow they’ll be calling to urge intercourse during the ovulation period … [this is] mass breeding’.
