For 35 years, Communist China imposed a harsh one-child policy on citizens, fearing overpopulation. In 2015, Beijing changed the policy to allow for two children. A few years later, with an aging population and low birth rates, it was changed to three, and finally, in 2021, the limit was removed altogether.  

Now, Chinese President Xi Jinping, desperate to reverse his nation’s population woes, has announced plans for a national pro-birth policy, and local officials are already encouraging bigger families.  

According to Reuters, government officials in Nanjing phone newlyweds asking them when their first baby is due. According to one source, the government “wants newlyweds to be pregnant within a year and their target is to make a phone call every quarter.” It’s not hard to imagine a future in which Chinese women are required to produce a specific number of children. 

This is the fruit of bad ideas. Seeing people as a problem to be solved is wrong because, as the psalmist sang millennia ago, babies are God’s blessings.  

And, as history shows, they’re also good economics.