In an attempt to boost the country's flagging birth rate, China is urging colleges and universities to provide “love education” to emphasise positive views on marriage, love, fertility, and family. Therefore, Beijing has been promoting various measures to make having children more attractive to young couples after China posted a second consecutive year of population decline in 2023, reported Reuters.
It is worth noting that China has the second-largest 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.
The Jiangsu Xinhua newspaper group said, citing China Population News, an official publication, that college students will be the biggest driver of fertility, but they have significantly changed their views on marriage and love. “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.
Publication details
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, as reported by Reuters and quoted by The Print.
The publication said that due to the lack of “systematic and scientific marriage and love education, college students have a vague understanding of emotional relationships.” Therefore, universities could focus on teaching junior college students about population and national conditions, new marriage and childbearing concepts, it said.
How does this work
According to the publication, senior college students and graduate students could be taught through “case analysis, group discussion on maintaining intimate relationships and communication between the sexes.”
The courses would be able to help them “improve their ability to correctly understand marriage and love and manage love relationships,” it added.
