In the capital, couples will be able to choose between 16 techniques, from IVF to sperm conservation. The issue of single women who want to have children; experts fear that the system will collapse due to excess requirements. Last year the number of newborns fell to a record low of 6.77 per thousand inhabitants. They anticipate that in 2023 it will continue to drop.
Beijing () – The Chinese government has taken up the challenge of promoting birth rates and countering the demographic crisis, with the inevitable repercussions on the economy and development that seem to mark more and more in recent times. The municipality of Beijing, for example, has made the decision -which became official yesterday- to include 16 different assisted fertilization techniques for couples in the capital’s health system, the latest (and to some extent desperate) strategy of the authorities to stimulate birth.
In a way, it is a true revolution, which also includes sensitive issues and issues that raise debates of an ethical nature, as well as a marked medical intervention with a view to assisted procreation. According to Du Xin, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Health Insurance Bureau, in vitro fertilization, embryo transplantation, and sperm freezing and storage will be included in basic health insurance. China is taking measures to counter the birth crisis and the first population decline in 60 years, the result of decades of one-child policy. Last year the number of newborns fell to a record low of 6.77 per thousand inhabitants and it is expected that in 2023 it will continue to drop.
In August last year, China’s National Health Commission instructed provinces to reform policies to boost fertility rates. Liaoning, in the northeast, announced in May that as of July 1 it would include assisted reproductive techniques.
Beijing’s announcement also precedes the court’s verdict in the case of Teresa Xu, a 35-year-old Chinese woman who sued a public hospital in the capital for violation of rights, because it refused to freeze her eggs because she was not married. Concerned about rapid ageing, government policy advisers proposed in March that single women should also have access to egg freezing and in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, among other services.
Fertility treatments and egg freezing techniques are difficult for single women to access due to national law requiring them to be married. However, some private clinics in some provinces, such as Sichuan in the southwest, have already started authorizing and practicing single IVF to counteract the decline in births. In addition, the liberalization of fertility treatments across the country could unleash increased demand in what is already the world’s largest market, putting to the test – doctors and specialist experts fear – fertility services, which in Right now they are extremely limited.
Demographers and economists have long pressed the Chinese government to remove all limits on childbearing. In the 1980s, China imposed a one-child law – often implemented in radical and violent ways – and in 2016 the government launched a “two-child” policy. But apparently this policy is not giving good results. Many couples do not want to have any children and others only want one because they find this decision too costly. In 2020, some members of the Academy of Social Sciences called on the State to promote pregnancies, artificial insemination and help for parents, especially in areas where the population is older.
