HONG KONG – “Having three children is the best,” says a vibrant neon pink sign at a wedding exhibition in the southern Chinese city of Changsha, where visitors can also get advice on tying the knot and men can wear a pregnancy belly to experience pain in childbirth.

The marriage-themed festival comes as China seeks to boost weddings and births to counter a shrinking population, but has drawn thin crowds and drawn criticism for being regressive, disparaging women and putting people off marriage – contrary to that. purpose of government.

Social media users cited slogans such as “Homeschooling is the best,” “Best at raising kids” and “Best at homework” at the show for reinforcing gender stereotypes.

“All slogans are for women. Shouldn’t you share the housework?” 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 that the festival probably “convinced a lot of hesitant people to give up on marriage.”

The number of marriage registrations in China in the first three quarters of 2024 fell 16.6 percent 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 to encourage people to marry and have children “at the right age”.

Beijing’s instructions included improving maternity and childcare benefits and providing housing support for families with more children, its most comprehensive framework to date, although details on funding and implementation are lacking.

“I think the effectiveness of government policies will be limited” if they are not supported by measures such as reducing working hours and eliminating gender discrimination against women in the workplace, said Xiujian Peng, senior research fellow at Victoria University’s Center for Policy Studies. .

Instead, local authorities offered the women free vitamins and cold-called them to encourage pregnancy, according to several social media posts.

“The cost of having children is still too high and the benefits too low,” said Shanghai-based Aiqi, 32, who rejected the state council’s latest measures. She declined to give her last name for privacy reasons.

“We need to change the competitive education system, the high-intensity work environment and the high cost of housing.”

Missed the mark?

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

And demographics don’t see a significant change anytime soon. While they expect a number of initiatives to boost 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 births,” said Yi Fuxian, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

China’s Yuwa Population Research estimates that the country needs to invest 10% of GDP to stabilize the population.

Policies like those set out last week have been helpful in countries like France and Sweden, but have not moved the needle in East Asia, most likely because of wide gender inequality, according to demographers.

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

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

The Changsha festival launched what authorities described as a “marriage school” where men can use their pregnancy bellies to simulate labor pain with levels 1-10, the state-backed Changsha Evening News reported. saying it allows couples to experience “the hardships and joy of living”. the nourishment of life”.

Couples can choose to change diapers and prepare formula at the expo to learn parenting skills and earn an “internship marriage certificate,” the paper said. The exhibition 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 put so much pressure on them and their middle-class families to have children.” Reuters