Elite Forum: Family Planning Offices Shift Focus to Fertility Promotion, Local Leaders Take Charge of Promoting Fertility

In recent news disclosed by Chinese female netizens, they often receive calls from street officials inquiring about their menstrual cycle, causing them great distress. Some unmarried women have also received similar calls. It is said that this is a new task arranged by a department of the Chinese Communist Party — the Birth Promotion Office. On October 30th, the General Office of the State Council of the CCP issued a document on accelerating the improvement of the fertility support policy system. The most important point in the document requires local leaders to personally take action to promote childbirth.

Since the late 1970s, the CCP has implemented strict family planning policies, resulting in over four hundred million abortions, aiming to reduce China’s population. Countless women suffered severe damage to their health. Now, the CCP government has made a sudden shift and is vigorously promoting childbirth, transforming the Family Planning Office into the Birth Promotion Office, turning it into a global governance joke.

Blind Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng in the United States expressed in the New Tang Dynasty’s “Elite Forum” program that, according to the information he has obtained, the Birth Promotion Office is actually a transformation from the original Family Planning Office. So far, they are mainly achieving the goal of promoting childbirth through concealment, inducement, and even giving small amounts of money. Although they have not resorted to the extreme violence of forced abortions like in the past, directly climbing over walls in the middle of the night to take people away for abortions and killing babies, the CCP may not rule out taking such measures in the future.

Now, I have learned that some corresponding measures have started in various hospitals and clinics. For example, the CCP previously ordered that any pregnant woman without approval from the Family Planning Office cannot give birth anywhere, and immediate punishment would follow if she did. Now, conversely, the CCP requires all hospital units that without permission from the Birth Promotion Office, they cannot perform abortions. If they do, immediate punishment will be imposed. These related measures have already begun to take effect. As for what measures will be taken next to coerce everyone, there is currently no specific feasible mandatory measure, but I believe the CCP is already planning it.

Chen Guangcheng said that the Family Planning Office in the past created countless human tragedies in China, caused by the bandit regime of the CCP. All these enforcers of the Family Planning Office, the henchmen of the CCP, in order to please the CCP and retain their official positions, have committed many atrocities. In the 1980s, the CCP had no laws related to family planning, and excessive births almost reached a state of killing unconditionally. It was common to snatch pregnant women away, use any means, climb over walls in the middle of the night to homes, take them to undergo abortions and sterilization, and even physically abuse them. This kind of thing happened every day not only in Shandong but also in rural China and throughout the country.

In our village, a woman was once locked inside the Family Planning Office without food for a day. Later, she escaped, and the local government sent over thirty people armed with sticks and belts to chase after her. They caught her by a cornfield and beat her with sticks before releasing her. The CCP’s treatment of these women knows no reason; they demand that within three months, they must undergo sterilization, and refusal is considered a crime, leading to harassment, arrest, and detention of their family members and neighbors. If a daughter-in-law in a household has not undergone sterilization, Family Planning officials would bring her mother-in-law to the office, force her to sit straight with legs stretched on the cement floor, arms extended forward, adding two bricks on them so she cannot move, even pouring water on her body until her daughter-in-law arrived and the session ended. The Family Planning Office uses various forms of torture, shocking the common people.

In the “Elite Forum,” producer Li Jun said that when he visited the homes of impoverished families in rural areas during the Spring Festival as a reporter, seeing their extreme poverty with doors and windows removed and facing ruin, he asked a poor peasant how their family became so impoverished. It turns out that it was due to fines for excess births, driving them to lose everything. This was in Jiangsu, which is considered a relatively economically well-off region in China.

According to CCP statistics, in 2011, the family planning system collected a total of 20 billion RMB in fines for excessive births. Scholar statistics show that from 1980 to the present, if each excess birth was fined ten thousand yuan on average, there have been between 150 to 200 million excess births nationwide, with fines ranging from 1.5 to 2 trillion yuan. With such financial incentives, all sorts of tragic events could arise. Of course, the estimate of ten thousand yuan per person is a relatively rational estimate, and the actual implementation might be much more brutal.

Li Jun in the “Elite Forum” mentioned that in the past decade, China’s marriage rate and birth rate have been declining, reaching an imbalance by 2021. The annual death toll in China is roughly around 12 million, and by 2021, the birth rate had fallen below the death rate. From 2021 to now, there has been an even sharper decline on top of the previous decreases, mainly due to two reasons. Firstly, the pandemic, which resulted in a significant death toll, including many who were at reproductive age. Secondly, the economic collapse caused by the zero-COVID policy has led to a sharp rise in unemployment. Some experts say that the youth unemployment rate has surpassed 50%, causing the marriage rate to drop by 30% or even 40% in the past one or two years. Due to economic pressures, many people are hesitant to marry and have children. Therefore, the CCP government is now in a rush because of the rapid aging of society, which will lead to disaster.

Guo Jun, the chief editor of the “Epoch Times” in the “Elite Forum,” expressed that the decline in China’s population has a significant impact on the country, especially after decades of strict family planning policies, resulting in an extremely unreasonable population structure. The population decline after the 1980s has already caused severe societal problems. Three years ago, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated that China’s population would start to shrink from 2027. The World Bank believes that negative growth will start from 2029. The Economist Intelligence Unit is the most pessimistic, predicting that China’s population will peak in 2025 before declining, but in reality, it started in 2022.

In addition, there is a gender imbalance issue. In the Chinese childbearing population, there are forty million more males than females, a serious problem. Because the bottleneck of population recovery relies on childbearing women, not on males. The decrease in population has a huge economic impact, resulting in a weakened economy due to labor shortage, reduced investment, and weakened consumption. Moreover, the decrease in the taxpayer population will lead to a drop in government revenue, resulting in an economic downturn. Chinese often mention Japan’s “lost thirty years,” but few connect it to Japan’s population decrease. Japan’s peak population was in 1990, right when their economic bubble burst. China’s situation is similar; in 2022, the population started to decline, and by 2023, the economy began to decline, which is not surprising.

Guo Jun emphasized that the issues China is facing are far more severe than those of Japan. Japan has not faced severe structural population issues, with the proportion of males to females in various age groups remaining relatively balanced. In contrast, China’s declining population, exacerbated by structural imbalances, will pose much more serious problems in the future. In fact, Japan is just a recent example; many civilizations’ declines have been linked to population decrease, including the Roman Empire, which eventually collapsed. Nowadays, Chinese youth are inclined toward the “Four Nos” phenomenon: no romance, no marriage, no children, and no homes. This is not just a social issue but also an economic one.

Chen Guangcheng mentioned in the “Elite Forum” that in order to promote childbirth, the CCP may resort to some evil methods. It is unimaginable what they would do, but the results are certain; the CCP will not achieve its goals like the violent family planning of the past. It would be too difficult for a woman to undergo the process of conception, pregnancy for ten months with intense coercion; despite the CCP mobilizing the entire country, it is impossible to accomplish. Nowadays, CCP personnel are somewhat different from before. Nowadays, party and government officials, as well as their cronies following the CCP, are in it just for the immediate benefits, in their own words, they are just looking for a few thousand yuan monthly salary here, even admitting that the Communist Party will fall sooner or later.

Therefore, the officials of the Communist Party are no longer loyal to or in agreement with the CCP; it’s just the immediate benefits that tie them to following the CCP’s car. If the CCP demands the formation of small squads to go to the countryside to pressure the common people, on the one hand, these people won’t put in as much effort, and on the other hand, the situation has changed. In the past, people complained about injustices after being targeted, including forced demolitions and land grabs, appealing for punishment of the lawbreakers. But now, the common people have lost all hope; they know the CCP doesn’t listen to reason. Previously, they thought that the central government was good and local officials were bad, that the central ideology was right, but distorted by the local authorities. Yet now, people are clear that from the central to local levels, they are all in cahoots, the enemies of the people. If the CCP officials do harmful things in such circumstances, they might face retaliation from the common people.

Guo Jun mentioned in the “Elite Forum” that worldwide, the solution to declining populations is through immigration, but China is not a country of immigrants, lacking the societal foundation for racial integration. Can the CCP government solve this issue by forcing people to have children? I don’t believe it will work. There have been attempts in other countries, such as Romania attempting to force citizens to have children, even establishing “menstrual police” to control childbearing women, but it proved ineffective.

Guo Jun said that traditional Chinese values emphasize following the natural order of things. However, the CCP is different; it fights against the heavens, the earth, and the people. Fighting against the heavens is about controlling natural and earthly events. Fighting against people is about organizing all human activities, including childbearing. The CCP will certainly use various unimaginable methods to promote fertility, but having children against people’s will is much more challenging. I do not think forced childbirth will succeed.

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