China calls on universities to provide 'love education'

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China calls on universities to provide 'love education'

HONG KONG, Dec 4 (Reuters) - China is urging colleges and universities to provide "love education" to emphasise positive views on marriage, love, fertility and family, in a bid to boost the country's flagging birth rate.

Beijing has been promoting various measures to try to make having children more attractive to young couples after China posted a second consecutive year of population decline in 2023.

China has the second-biggest population in the world at 1.4 billion, but it is ageing quickly, which will increase the demands on government spending in the future and put pressure on the economy.

College students will be the biggest driver of fertility but they have significantly changed their views on marriage and love, the Jiangsu Xinhua newspaper group said, citing China Population News, an official publication.

"Colleges and universities should assume the responsibility of providing marriage and love education to college students by offering marriage and love education courses," the publication said.

The measures would help create a "healthy and positive marriage and childbearing cultural atmosphere."

The state council, or cabinet, rallied local governments in November to direct resources towards fixing China's population decline and spread respect for childbearing and marriages "at the right age," although demographers said the moves were unlikely to resonate with young Chinese.

Around 57% of college students polled by China Population News said they did not want to fall in love, mainly because they did not know how to allocate time to balance the relationship between study and love, the publication said.

Due to the lack of "systematic and scientific marriage and love education, college students have a vague understanding of emotional relationships."

Universities could focus on teaching junior college students about population and national conditions, new marriage and childbearing concepts, it said.

Senior college students and graduate students could be taught through "case analysis, group discussion on maintaining intimate relationships and communication between the sexes."

Don't waste the golden time of career development on love.

If all the educated, ambitious people don't breed that kinda leaves it to the less capable.

Family-based reproduction has come into conflict with company-based Labor.Turn left ：the company will take care of the children during working hours. Turn right：drive women back into the family.
Simply reasoning without taking measures can not reverse the low birth rate.

People don't want to be burdened financially more than they already often are, so they opt out of having kids.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-calls-universities-provide-love-education-2024-12-04/



Doesn't anybody fornicate any more?

I would think in a country where hardly anybody is religious, it would be much more commonplace.

...The culture of sexual repression in the PRC culminated during 1966–1976. Novels, movies, and other forms of literary and artistic pieces related to love and sexuality were banned as they were considered products of a degenerate, bourgeois way of life. People were not allowed to openly express love and intimacy, with hugging, caressing, or kissing deemed unethical. The state tried to eliminate all gender differences. For example, clothing with feminine features was considered capitalist, and the image of the “iron girl” was further reinforced. Due to the state’s strict control over sexuality, although Chinese women in this era had achieved significant improvements in socioeconomic status (SES), including a decline in illiteracy and a very high labor force participation rate, their sexual lives had not changed substantially. The vast majority of Chinese women still played the passive, reproduction-oriented role in sexuality, as they always had in ancient China...

I would think in a country where hardly anybody is religious, it would be much more commonplace.