China's latest cry for more babies may fall on deaf ears

"Having three children is the best" says a vibrant neon pink sign at a wedding expo in the southern Chinese city of Changsha, where visitors can also pick up tips on tying the knot and men can strap on a pregnancy belly to experience childbirth pain.

The marriage-themed festival comes at a time when China is looking to spur weddings and births to counter a shrinking population, but it has drawn thin crowds and sparked criticism for being regressive, disparaging towards women and for putting people off marriage - contrary to the government's aim.

Social media users called out slogans at the expo such as "Housework is the best", "Best at raising kids" and "Best at tutoring homework" for reinforcing gender stereotypes.

"The slogans are all aimed at women. Shouldn't sharing housework be the right thing to do?" said a user with the handle Jianguo on China's Weibo platform.

A user with the handle Xiaohong on social e-commerce site Xiaohongshu, known as China's answer to Instagram, wrote the festival had probably "persuaded a lot of hesitant people to give up marriage".

The number of marriage registrations in China in the first three quarters of 2024 dropped 16.6% year on year to 4.75 million couples, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Beijing rallied local governments just last week to direct resources towards urging people to marry and have children "at the right age".

Beijing's instructions included improving maternity and childcare benefits and offering housing support for families with multiple children, its most comprehensive framework to date, although lacking in details on funding and implementation.

"I believe the effectiveness of government policies will be limited" unless backed by measures such as cutting working hours and eliminating gender discrimination against women in the workplace, said Xiujian Peng, senior Research Fellow in the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University.

Local authorities have instead been offering women free vitamins and cold calling them to encourage pregnancy, according to multiple posts on social media.

"The cost of having children is still too high and the benefits too low," said 32-year-old Shanghai-based Aiqi, who shrugged off the state council's latest measures. She declined to give her last name for privacy reasons.

"We need to change the competitive education system, high intensity work environment and the high housing cost."

Missed the mark?

China abandoned its 35-year-old one-child policy in 2015, but it has struggled to increase the birth rate that fell to a record low last year.

And demographers do not see a significant change soon. While they expect a flurry of initiatives aimed at spurring births in the coming months, they warn that spending by indebted local governments will remain limited.

"It takes 20-years for a child to become a tax payer.

Debt-ridden local governments simply have no incentive to encourage childbirth," said Yi Fuxian, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

China's Yuwa Population Research estimates the country needs to invest 10% of GDP to stabilise the population.

Policies like those laid out last week have been helpful in countries such as France and Sweden, but they have not moved the needle in east Asia, most likely due to high gender inequality, according to demographers.

South Korea and Japan rank 46th and 59th in the World Economic Forum's gender gap index, while China ranks 107th.

Top-down measures that exhort people to have more children are rarely effective, said Yun Zhou, assistant professor of sociology, University of Michigan.

Changsha's festival launched what authorities described as a "marriage school", where men can use a pregnancy belly to simulate labour pain with levels 1-10, state-backed Changsha Evening News reported, saying it enabled couples to experience the "hardship and joy of nurturing life".

Couples can opt to change diapers and prepare formula milk at the expo to learn parenting skills, and get an "internship marriage certificate", the paper said. The expo will run every weekend until the end of November.

The festival missed the mark, said Weibo user Yuxiao.

"Treat girls as human beings and respect them. They don't want to get married in the first place, and then the authorities are putting so much pressure on them and their families with average economic levels to have children."