China is taking accelerated steps to increase the national birth rate, stoking fears about public access to birth control products as the Government reverses a long-standing tax exemption on contraceptives.
From January 1, condoms and other contraceptives will be removed from the exception list for the country’s value-added tax (VAT), subjecting the products to a 13% tariff, the Associated Press reported.
Contraceptives have been tax-exempt for the last 33 years after being excluded from the scheme under the One-Child Policy, which controlled the national population from 1980 to 2015.
Despite the Government increasing the number of legal children per household to two in 2015 and three in 2021, birth rates have continued to plummet, prompting what the state calls a “fundamental realignment” in strategy.
But assistant professor of economics at Singapore Management University Yuan Mei told Time Magazine the tax is “unlikely” to actually encourage young people to have more children.
“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.”
He said young people “generally feel that measures reducing the cost and time burden of childrearing would have a greater influence on their fertility choices”.
Many online commentators shared their disapproval of the policy change on popular Chinese forum RedNote, including one user who said: “Now, not only can we not afford to have children, we can’t even afford to have sex.”
The tax could have an outsized impact on low-income communities, who may be deterred from using contraceptives and become more vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies.
Speaking with ABC News, senior analyst at Mercator Institute for China Studies, Daria Impiombato, said the change comes with significant risks amidst rising sexually transmitted infections (STIs) across the country.
“It would be really important for young people in high school and college to keep them accessible from a preventative perspective of STIs.
“Some countries are moving towards making condoms free, especially for young people. Taxing them risks limiting access and undermining STI prevention.”
Impiombato warned the Government’s incentivisation of childbearing could also have damaging effects on women and girls’ access to education and freedom of choice.
In the shadow of state-mandated abortions under the One-Child Policy, concern about the erosion of women’s reproductive rights is rife.
Jiangxi teacher Zou Xuan told the Associated Press the tax was “a disciplinary tactic, a management of women’s bodies and my sexual desire”.