In 2022, China recorded its lowest ever birth rate, of 6.77 births per 1,000 people–the lowest it had dipped in sixty years. File Photo.
Hong Kong: A prominent member of China’s top political advisory body has said she will propose allowing unmarried women to access egg freezing as a step to preserve their fertility after the Asian country’s population fell drastically last year for the first time in nearly six decades.
Lu Weiying, a member of China’s top political advisory body, has told the state-run media that she would also propose including infertility treatments within the public health insurance system at the upcoming Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which is scheduled to begin on March 4.
A fertility doctor in China’s southern Hainan province herself, Lu said giving single women access to freezing their eggs will enable them “to preserve the eggs before they pass their peak reproductive years. The woman still needs to get married if she wants to use her frozen eggs and get pregnant in future,” Weiying said.
In China, currently, fertility treatments such as in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and egg freezing are banned for unmarried women.
The political advisor’s recommendations come amid Chinese authorities trying to bolster a sharply declining birth rate with incentives including expanding maternity leave, financial and tax benefits for having children as well as housing subsidies.
In 2022, China recorded its lowest ever birth rate, of 6.77 births per 1,000 people–the lowest it had dipped in sixty years.
Some Chinese provinces have already made changes to their rules to boost birth rates. Jilin in north-eastern China, which has one of the lowest birth rates in the country, modified its rules in 2002 to permit single women to access IVF but it has had little or negligible impact with the practise still banned nationally under the country’s National Health Commission.
Nine of the 10 most populous nations in the world are presently experiencing sharp decline in fertility. China’s 2022 fertility rate of 1.18 was the lowest and well below the 2.1 OECD standard for a stable population. China is yet to officially release its fertility data for 2022.
China’s current demographic downturn may well be attributed to the country’s one-child policy imposed between 1980 and 2015 as well as the high cost of education for bringing up more than two children.
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