China to hike tax on condoms in attempt to boost falling birth rate

[cstross@wandering.shop]

China to hike tax on condoms in attempt to boost falling birth rate

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/18/china-to-raise-tax-condoms-boost-birth-rate

That's not going to work. Instead, it'll boost the abortion rate and cause a spike in the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases.

(Attempts to force women into pregnancy by withholding contraception tend to fail horrifically—see also Romania in the 1970s and 1980s following Decree 770.)

[alextecplayz@techhub.social]

@cstross Worse, because of our Ceaușist measures against abortion, it didn't just increase the birth rate, but it seriously increased the amount of unwanted children, and just a few years after Decree 770 was passed, Ceaușescu pulled back funding from everything in order to pay Romania's foreign debt.

One of our independent news publications, Recorder, released a video about this back in September: https://youtube.com/watch?v=S2G790FEsXk (age-restricted), which showed the conditions in 'handicapped' children asylums / orphanages as they were called back then. Disabled kids were categorized in either 'small', 'medium', or 'total' handicap level. 'total handicap' kids were basically deemed irrecuperable and unproductive.

Some of these orphanages were severely understaffed and underfunded, kids would share slices of bread between them, they would huddle in their unlit, grimy and filthy dormitories naked (as they didn't have the funds to get them all clothed), covered in dirt, their own urine and feces...

[alextecplayz@techhub.social]

@cstross They were beaten (as corporal punishment was the norm during the communist regime), the kids starved to death, I would consider this as a crime against humanity, and if Ceaușescus had a fair trial, I'm more than sure the kids' conditions and deaths would have been added to their tally.

And I'm not even covering the lack of teachers back then, teachers had to shorten their classes in order to accommodate the sheer amount of students in their classes, and the economic toll that Ceaușescu's debt repayment plan took on parents that then had to ultimately send their kids to orphanages because they couldn't afford everything they needed.

Hopefully they are prepared to accommodate the rise by ensuring there are enough school staff, enough hospital staff, and ensuring that parents can afford having one or more children under these new measures 🙁

[datarama@hachyderm.io]

@alextecplayz @cstross At least in Denmark, the *one* thing the Ceauşescu regime has become most infamous for is those children. The pictures that came out of those horrid orphanages shocked the public consciousness more than any of the other atrocities there, probably more than anything other out of the post-Stalin eastern bloc. The term "Ceauşescu-children" is still sometimes used in the meaning "systemically, extremely mistreated kids".

[angusm@mastodon.social]

@cstross “Gee, condoms are a bit pricey these days, I guess I better just start a family,” thought no one ever.