Starting this Thursday, January 1, 2026, Chinese consumers will pay a 13% tax on sales of contraceptives such as condoms.
At the same time, childcare services will be exempt from taxes, as part of measures taken by the world’s second-largest economy to increase its birth rate.
Reform of the country’s tax system, announced late last year, eliminates several exemptions in place since 1994, when China still adopted the decades-old one-child policy.
The measures also include an exemption from value-added tax on services related to weddings and elderly care.
They are part of a broader effort, which also includes increasing paternity leave and offering cash bonuses.
An aging population and a slowing economy have led Beijing to encourage young Chinese to get married – and couples to have children.
Official figures show that China’s population has declined three years in a row.
In 2024, 9.54 million babies will be born in the country. That number represents about half of the births recorded a decade ago, when China began relaxing its rules on how many people have children.
Yet the tax on contraceptives (including condoms, pills, and birth control devices) has sparked concerns about unwanted pregnancies and HIV rates, not to mention ridicule of the measure among the Chinese.
Some point out that it would take much more than an increase in the price of condoms to convince people to have children.
A reseller advised retailers to stock the product before the price increase. And one social media user joked: “I’m now going to buy condoms for life.” »
Another user wrote that people know the difference between the price of a condom and the cost of raising a child.
China is one of the most expensive countries to raise children, according to a report from Beijing’s YuWa Population Research Institute, released in 2024.
Costs depend on tuition fees in a highly competitive academic environment and the difficulties women face balancing work and motherhood, the study found.
The reduction in the country’s economic activity was caused, in part, by a real estate crisis that hit the population’s savings. This has generated among families (and especially among young people) a feeling of uncertainty and lack of confidence about their future.
“I have a son and I don’t want him anymore,” said Daniel Luo, 36. He lives in Henan province, in the east of the country.
“It’s like when the subway fare increases. When it increases by one or two yuan, people don’t change their habits. You still have to take the subway, right?”
Luo says he is not worried about the price increase.
“A box of condoms can cost an extra five yuan, maybe 10, at most 20 (about R$4 to R$16). In a year, it only costs a few hundred yuan, which is quite affordable.”
But cost may be an issue for others. That’s what worries Rosy Zhao, who lives in the central Chinese city of Xi’an.
According to her, the increase in the cost of contraception, which is a necessity, could cause students or people in financial difficulty to “take the risk”.
For Zhao, this would be “the most dangerous possible outcome” of this policy. And observers seem divided on the objective of tax reform.
The idea that increasing the condom tax would influence birth rates is an “overstatement of the measure”, according to demographer Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States.
He believes China is willing to impose taxes “as much as possible” as it faces a slumping domestic market and growing public debt.
Revenue generated by China’s value-added tax amounts to around US$1 trillion (around R$5.5 trillion), accounting for nearly 40 percent of the country’s total tax revenue last year.
The creation of a condom tax is “symbolic” and reflects Beijing’s attempt to encourage people to increase China’s “surprisingly low” fertility rates, according to Henrietta Levin of the US Center for International and Strategic Studies.
For her, what also complicates the efforts is that many policies and subsidies will have to be put in place by provincial governments, which are in debt. And it is unclear whether they will be able to devote sufficient resources to these measures.
Chinese incentives to get people to have children also risk backfiring if people perceive the government as being “too intrusive” in a deeply personal decision, Levin says.
Reports have recently emerged in the press that women in some provinces have received calls from local authorities, asking them about their menstrual cycles and their plans to have children.
The local health bureau in the southwestern province of Yunnan said the data was needed to identify pregnant women. But that hasn’t improved the government’s image, according to Levin.
“The Communist Party cannot help but infiltrate all the decisions that concern it,” she explains. “So in a way he ends up being his own worst enemy.”
Observers and women themselves say the country’s male-dominated leadership fails to understand the social changes behind these broader shifts. And this is not just happening in China.
Western countries and even in the region itself, such as Japan and South Korea, have faced difficulties in increasing the birth rate and reducing the aging of their populations.
One reason for this is child-rearing, which falls disproportionately on women, research shows. But there are other factors as well, like the decline in marriages and even dating.
China’s package of measures does not solve the real problem: the way young people interact today, which increasingly prevents real human connections, according to Luo.
He highlights the increase in sales of sex toys in China. For Luo, this is a sign that “people are just self-indulgent” because “interacting with another person has become more and more of a nuisance.”
Connecting is easier and more comfortable, he says, because “the pressure is real.”
“Young people today face a lot more stress from society than they did 20 years ago,” says Luo. “Of course, materially, they live better, but the expectations placed on them are much higher.”
“Everyone is just exhausted.”
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