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Beijing, China – China is facing a demographic crisis, with a rapidly ageing population and a declining birth rate. This poses a significant threat to the nation’s economic well-being. Desperate to reverse this trend, the Chinese government has resorted to some rather unorthodox measures.
The latest tactic involves the censorship of short online videos portraying unhappy families. These videos, often comedic in nature, depict common marital and familial issues such as overbearing mothers-in-law and lazy husbands. Titles like “My Husband is a Mummy’s Boy” and “In the Dog House with Mother-in-Law” give a flavour of the content.
The Chinese authorities fear that these popular videos, typically around a minute long and found on platforms like Douyin (China’s TikTok) and Kuaishou, are further discouraging young people from starting families. Hundreds of such videos have been removed from these platforms.
An official statement issued by the government on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, claims these videos promote “extreme emotions” and “amplify and exaggerate conflict,” particularly between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law.
However, the effectiveness of this approach is questionable. For every censored video, a slew of imitations and parodies appear online. One such spoof tells the story of a daughter-in-law ostracized for neglecting her in-laws while tending to her own ailing father. The lack of support from her husband leads to a bitter argument and, ultimately, divorce. This hardly paints a rosy picture of family life.
President Xi Jinping himself has made numerous appeals to young people to get married and have children. The one-child policy, implemented in 1979, was scrapped in 2016, allowing couples to have up to three children. Despite this change, birth rates continue to plummet. China is on track to have a staggering 520 million elderly citizens by 2050.
The reasons behind the declining birth rate are complex. Many young Chinese cite the high cost of raising a family and their desire for personal freedom as deterrents to parenthood. It’s no surprise then that the Chinese government is keen to erase portrayals of squabbling families and replace them with idealised visions of harmonious domestic life. Whether this strategy will be successful in stimulating a baby boom remains to be seen.
