During decades, China severely restricted the number of children couples could have, arguing that everyone would be better off with fewer mouths to feed. The one-child policy was woven into the fabric of everyday life, through slogans on street banners and in popular culture and public art.
Now, faced with a shrinking and aging population, China uses many of the same propaganda channels to send the opposite message: have more babies.
The government has been offering financial incentives for couples to have two or three children, but the efforts have not been successful. The birth rate in China has fallen sharply, and last year was the lowest since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
That is why the Government has started to promote a “pro-birth culture”, organizing beauty contests for pregnant women and producing rap videos about the advantages of having children. In recent years, the parastatal broadcaster's annual Spring Festival Gala, one of the country's most-watched television events, has aired public service announcements promoting families with two or three children.
The effort has been met with widespread ridicule. Critics have seen the campaign as the latest sign that policymakers are blind to the growing challenges of raising multiple children.
Between 1980 and 2015, the year the one-child policy officially ended, the Chinese government used extensive propaganda to warn that having more babies would hinder China's modernization. Today it portrays large families as the cornerstone to achieving a prosperous society.
For officials, imposing the one-child policy also meant they had to challenge the traditional belief that children, and boys in particular, provided a form of security in old age. The slogans before said that the State would take care of the elderly Chinese. But by 2040, almost a third of China's population will be over 60 years old. The state will have difficulty supporting older people, particularly those in rural areas, who receive a fraction of the pension that urban wage earners receive. Now the official message has changed, highlighting the importance of self-sufficiency and family support.
But the slogans of a bygone era are finding a new echo among young Chinese. On social media, many have shared photos of one-child policy slogans as witty responses to what they described as growing social pressure to have larger families. Some of the posts have garnered thousands of likes and hundreds of comments.
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