Friday, December 19, 2025 - China is set to tax contraception for the first time in more than three decades in a move to get more families to have children.
Contraceptive drugs and products such as condoms will no
longer be exempt from China's 13% value added tax from January 1, 2026, the
country's newest tax laws have revealed.
The move comes as the country's birth rate declines. In
2024, 9.5 million babies were born in China, about one-third fewer than
the 14.7 million born in 2019, according to the National Bureau of
Statistics.
As de@ths have outpaced births in
China, India overtook it as the world's most populous country in
2023.
But the tax change has been ridiculed on on Chinese social
media by people who have joked that they would be fools not to know that
raising a child is more expensive than using condoms, even if they are
taxed.
"That's a really ruthless move," said Hu Lingling,
mother of a 5-year-old who said she is determined not to have another child.
She said she would "lead the way in abstinence" as a rebel.
"It is also hilarious, especially compared to forced
abortions during the family planning era," she said.
Experts are raising concerns over potential increases in
unplanned pregnancies and s£xually transmitted diseases due to higher costs for
contraceptives.
China's huge population growth previously prompted the
ruling Communist Party to ban couples from having more than one child in a rule
they enforced from about 1980 until 2015, through fines and other
penalties.
In some cases women underwent forced abortions and children
born over the one child limit were deprived of an identification number,
effectively making them non-citizens.
The government raised the birth limit to two children in
2015. Then, as China's population began to fall, it was lifted to three
children in 2021.
Contraception has previously been actively encouraged and
easily accessed, sometimes for free. Now, it will be taxed, so as to discourage
people from using them to prevent pregnancies.
Director of the University of Virginia's Demographics
Research Group, Qian Cai said: "Higher prices may reduce access to
contraceptives among economically disadvantaged populations, potentially
leading to increases in unintended pregnancies and s£xually transmitted
infections. Those outcomes could, in turn, lead to more abortions and higher
health-care costs."
She also said the new taxes would have a "very
limited" effect on reproductive decisions.
"For couples who do not want children or do not want
additional children, a 13% tax on contraceptives is unlikely to influence their
reproductive decisions, especially when weighed against the far higher costs of
raising a child," she said.
But University of Wisconsin-Madison senior scientist Yi
Fuxian said imposing the tax was "only logical".
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