China’s mandate give good news or else

China’s mandate give good news or else

Chinese officials are reportedly hectoring newlyweds to have babies. The party-state is intruding where families annoyingly barge in.

It’s an observation that’s a joke that’s a cliché: “Koi… good news?” Newlyweds across languages, cultures and geographies have been subjected to a version of this euphemism even before the honeymoon glow wears off. Now, as if the “nudge-nudge wink-wink” pressure of the overbearing family wasn’t bad enough, the paternal party-state in Xi Jinping’s China has decided to take on the role. It is making calls to young couples, and strongly suggesting that they urgently reproduce.

Chinese social media has been replete with posts — they are often quickly taken down, though — of local government officials calling up women soon after their nuptials. Unlike the nosy in-law, though, the bureaucrat is direct: “Are you pregnant yet?” was reportedly the most common question. The pressure to reproduce seems to be a top-down phenomenon. At the recently concluded 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi declared that there would be a concerted effort by the state to boost birth rates. That, it is likely, explains the top-down obsession with babies.

The fact remains that China’s one-child policy — in force from 1980 to 2015 — has had profound social and economic consequences. The set-up of the family, and the burden of care for the elderly threatens to overwhelm both individuals and the state’s coffers. Now, in a bid to boost the young, working population, the state is promoting “masculine values” for men and exhorting the “traditional” responsibilities of women. In all this, no one seems to spare a thought for the ordinary Chinese couple. Their lives and choices seem to be in service to the ephemeral and changing goals of an ideological machine. Most people in India can attest to how intimately oppressive families can be. Imagine if the almighty state, too, tried to enter — and control — the most private of domains.