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So, are you pregnant yet? China’s stepped-up push for more babies
Government family planning officials who once enforced the one-child policy are employing in-your-face approaches to lift the birth rate.
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Faced with a declining population, the Chinese government is responding with a time-tested tactic: inserting itself into this most intimate of choices for women.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
Vivian Wang
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BEIJING – The first time a government worker encouraged Ms Yumi Yang to have a baby, she thought little of it. She and her husband were registering their marriage at a local office in north-eastern China and the worker gave them free prenatal vitamins, which she chalked up to the government trying to be helpful.
When an official later called to ask if she had taken them and then called again after she did get pregnant to track her progress, she shrugged those questions off as well-intentioned too. But officials showed up at her door after she had given birth, asking to take a photograph of her with her baby for their files. That was too much.
