China imposes 13% tax on condoms in order to boost birth rates

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Under the one-child policy, families that had additional children faced hefty fines and at times forced abortions or sterilizations. Children born outside the plan were also often denied registration at birth, thus creating a generation of unregistered citizens who were unable to access healthcare services, enroll in public schools, or travel freely. The government lifted the birth limit to two children in 2015 and to three in 2021. China was surpassed by India in 2023 as the world’s most populous country, with the number of babies born in China dropping further from a 60-year-low of 14.7 million in 2019 to 9.5 million in 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

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he Chinese government is testing out a new solution to falling birth rates: making sex more expensive.

Consumers will pay a 13% value-added tax on contraceptive drugs and products, including condoms, beginning Jan. 1, as part of China’s newly revised Value-Added Tax Law. Those products have been exempted from tax since 1993 as part of China’s one-child policy, which heavily penalized families for having more than one child from 1980 to 2015. As the country’s birth rate has fallen in recent years, the government has turned to seeking to boost birth rates with a range of incentives and subsidies.

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