Govt launches pregnancy push

Chinese authorities are phoning up newlyweds and urging them to have children soon after getting married as part of a government campaign to boost the country’s declining birth rate. Thousands responded to a post on the Chinese social network Weibo this week, reporting calls from local health services asking if they were pregnant. In one post, a Weibo user described a colleague’s experience answering a call from the Nanjing city government’s women’s health service. The user said an official told their colleague that the local government “wants newlyweds to be pregnant within a year and their target is to make a phone call every quarter”. Others responded saying they had received similar calls. The post was taken down hours later. One woman wrote that a women’s health centre calls her “once a month to ask if I am pregnant”. The reports emerged after Xi Jinping, China’s President, said the country would establish a policy to boost birth rates and improve the country’s population development.