An Unwinnable Gamble: Why Can't China's Annual $500 "Baby Bonus" Buy a Child's Future?

China offered birth subsidies in an attempt to save a depressed population. But when parenting becomes a gamble, the prize money is more like a consolation prize than a chip to turn the game around. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the dysfunctional logic and unspoken subtext behind the policy. Dong District wrote an article last week that China’s population faces a low fertility rate, and recently received a submission to discuss the dislocation behind China’s subsidy policy in more detail and share it with readers. (Synopsis: China’s fertility rate has fallen to a historical low, and the government can’t give money to urge the next generation) (Background supplement: Chinese state media sings about the instability of the US stablecoin: Circle listing bubble, US debt default will lead to decoupling) China issued the “Implementation Plan for the Childcare Subsidy System” this week, emphasizing that from January 1, 2025, families with infants and young children aged 0~3 will be provided with a subsidy of 3,600 yuan per person per year, whether it is one, two or three children. (Yes, it has already been implemented, but after half a year it seems that it has not been effective, so it was officially announced again this week.) At 3,600 yuan (about NT$15,000) a year until the child is three years old, it’s a cheque with a clear price tag trying to buy an answer about the country’s future. However, when we dig deeper into the subtext of the heartwarming narrative of the official media, we find that it is more like a bet that cannot be won. This is not just a question of whether money is enough, but an attempt by the state to use money to solve a crisis of trust and structural dilemma that has long gone beyond the scope of money. In just one generation, China’s birth policy has completed the forced birth control from “only give birth to a good one, the government will provide for the elderly”, to the 180-degree hairpin bend of “please give you a baby, the government gives a bonus”. This shift in this scenario is itself the most profound irony of policy credibility. For the younger generation who grew up in the shadow of the strict one-child policy and were indoctrinated with the concept of “fewer children and better children”, the state’s call for childbirth is like a parent who once strictly forbade you to fall in love, suddenly urging you to get married and have children quickly. This shift is not only abrupt, but also calls into question the sincerity of its motives. Therefore, the 3,600 yuan bonus is not so much a welfare as an instrumental directive with historical irony, which seeks to bridge a trust account that has long since gone bankrupt due to violent policy swings. Placebo: Why can’t money cure the real cause of “not wanting to have children”? Let’s use a metaphor to understand the essence of this policy. Imagine living in a wilderness with little infrastructure, no flat roads, no gas stations, and no parking lots. At this point, the government hands you a discount coupon for a car purchase and claims that it is to encourage you to drive. Would you buy a car in the wilderness because of this discount? China’s birth subsidy is this seemingly attractive car coupon. It attempts to treat the obvious symptom of “low fertility” while perfectly avoiding the real cause of the symptom: a lack of affordable, trustworthy social support systems. As Yale professor Xiaobo Zhang points out, the real solution lies in “affordable childcare, adequate parental leave, and workplace protections for women.” These are the roads, gas stations and parking lots that support a family to dare to welcome a new life. Handing out cash is one of the simplest and laziest forms of governance. Once again, it cleverly privatized and familized the burden of parenting, allowing parents to use the meagre subsidy to market their own childcare, health care, and education. However, this is precisely the deepest fear of contemporary youth. What they are facing is a highly market-oriented and competitive parenting environment. The government chose to give money rather than spend huge sums of money on a public childcare system, perhaps because the former is more politically “effective” in terms of propaganda, while the latter requires long and difficult structural reforms. This kind of palliative thinking makes the 3,600 yuan more like a placebo, which can temporarily relieve anxiety but cannot cure the root cause of the disease. When the state tries to put a price on “priceless” The deeper problem is that this policy fundamentally misunderstands the nature of fertility decisions. It naively assumes that whether or not to have children is a “addition and subtraction” that can be calculated in money, and that as long as subsidies can offset some of the expenses, people’s willingness to have children will increase. However, for a young couple in a big city, procreation is never a simple math problem, but a complex trade-off involving opportunity cost, personal freedom, and future risk. At CNY 3,600 per year, what can I buy in Shanghai or Beijing? Maybe it’s a few cans of imported milk powder, or a few expensive early education classes. But can it buy back a woman’s career interrupted by childbirth? Can it compensate the couple for the loss of personal time and freedom? Can you pay for that never-ending educational arms race that starts in kindergarten? Is it a better hedge against the economic uncertainty and class anxiety that pervades society as a whole? When the government tries to buy a “priceless” decision with a clear “price”, this fundamental mismatch not only seems absurd, but even constitutes an offense. It underestimates the complexity and wisdom of modern parental decision-making and reduces a profound life decision to a cheap deal. This also explains why many people scoff at this policy, never calculating diaper money, but the whole future bet. Breaking down the counter-argument: a “precision feed” that could exacerbate inequality Of course, there will be a voice that thinks: “Talk is better than nothing, and for some families, this money is always a help.” Some people will even cite the example of Hohhot in Inner Mongolia offering nearly 100,000 yuan to three-child families, thinking that increasing efforts can work. The fallacy of this view is that it ignores the vastly different consequences of this “incentive model” in different social classes. Let’s face a tough question: who is most attractive to this 3,600 RMB? Is it the couple who worked in finance and decided to become a guest after calculating the opportunity cost, or the family who was on the fringes of the economy and extremely sensitive to any cash inflow? The policy seems to be the same, but the effect may be a “precision feeding” that exacerbates social solidification. It may not persuade the middle class to have one more child, but it may prompt families who lack stable resources to make long-term reproductive decisions for this short-term subsidy. When the subsidy comes to an abrupt end after the child is three years old, these “rewarded” new lives will face even tougher challenges along with their families. Instead of producing the desired high-quality workforce for the country, this could create new social welfare burdens and intergenerational poverty. From this perspective, Hohhot’s reward is more like a dangerous experiment that could create a vulnerable group that depends on birth subsidies for their livelihoods, and make the long-term outcome of the policy contrary to its original intentions. In the final analysis, China’s fertility crisis is ostensibly a decline in population numbers, but the root cause is the collapse of trust and the disappearance of hope. The younger generation’s expectations for the future have shifted from optimistic growth in the past to conservative survival in the present. Instead of believing in grand promises, they value immediate certainty: stable jobs, affordable housing, and a fair social environment. Above this ruin of trust, any mere monetary stimulus pales in comparison. The annual subsidy of 3,600 yuan is like trying to fill a deep well that has long dried up with a few buckets of bottled water. It can neither solve the structural drought nor convince people that there will be a sweet spring again. Only if the government is willing to retreat from the shortcut of “handing out money” and instead devote itself to the construction of water conservancy projects, that is, to build a truly fair, stable and trustworthy…