Condoms and other contraceptive products are likely to become more expensive in China from next month, as part of Beijing's wider push to lift the country's birth rate.
In an announcement about China's Value-added Tax (VAT) Law this week, condoms and contraceptive pills were removed from the exemption list, meaning up to 13 per cent tax could be added.
It will end a 33-year tax exemption on contraceptives first introduced under the One-child Policy.
A condom in China can be as cheap as $0.60, roughly half the regular retail price in Australia. But it remains unclear how Chinese manufacturers and retailers will respond to the tax in the new year.
Experts say the tax is a step backwards for women, young people and low-income groups, warning it overlooks gender-equality concerns and may make contraception less accessible for those who need it most.
"It would be really important for young people in high school and college to keep them [contraceptives] accessible from a preventative perspective of STIs [sexually transmitted infections]," Daria Impiombato, senior analyst with Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), told the ABC.
"Some countries are moving towards making condoms free, especially for young people. Taxing them risks limiting access and undermining STI prevention."
A study released in June found that among people aged 15–24 on the Chinese mainland, the incidence and mortality of STIs — including HIV — had been rising over recent years.
China first exempted condoms and contraceptive pills from VAT in 1993, at the height of its strict birth-control strategies. The aim was to make contraception cheap and widely accessible to slow population growth.
That logic has now flipped with birth rates hitting record lows and Beijing shifting from "population control" to "fertility promotion".
While contraceptive products will lose the exemption, matchmaking agencies have been newly added to the tax-exempt list.
Chinese state media has been encouraging women to marry and have children during university years, something Ms Impiombato warns could also affect women's educational and career pathways.
Experts say the new tax is not just an economic adjustment, but part of a broader political shift in how the state approaches family, marriage and reproduction.
A step backwards
On the Chinese social media platform RedNote, some users said they were taken by surprise and had begun buying extra condoms in response.
"It's not just having children being unaffordable now, so is having sex. Maybe better stay single," one joked in a comment.
The contraceptives tax is one part of a wider national effort to boost fertility.
In July, Beijing introduced its first national birth-support package, offering families an annual allowance of 3,600 yuan ($776) per child until the child turns three.
State media described the reforms as a "fundamental realignment" of population strategy.
The shift comes as China records three consecutive years of population decline, including by 1.39 million in 2024.
Ms Impiombato said higher condom prices could put young people at greater risk.
"People were starting to be really upset about that because suddenly you start being penalised if you are single or don't want to have children," she said.
China's state-owned media also featured reports of university students sharing their experiences of parenting while studying, and promoting the social benefits of having children while on campus.
"This raises questions about how marriage and parenting pressure at younger ages might impact women's educational outcomes in the future," Ms Impiombato said.
'It's about politics'
Zhou Yun, an assistant professor of social demography and family sociology at the University of Michigan, told the ABC the new tax underscored a deeper tension between the state and younger Chinese.
"China's population policy has always been as much about demography as it is about politics," Dr Zhou said.
She argued that the state continued to promote a narrow ideal of the "Chinese family".
"Heterosexual marriage is privileged, women's labour at home is expected … and those people outside the structure of heterosexual marriage are rendered invisible," she said.
Chinese state-owned media said that the change showed China's population strategy was undergoing a fundamental realignment.
"In the 1990s, to control the rapid growth of the population, reducing the cost of contraception became one of the public policy objectives," said an article on China.com, a government-sponsored website run by China Radio International.
The trend has been visible in recent state-media reporting, including coverage of a study claiming that women who have three or four children live longer — a claim that drew significant public backlash.
Dr Zhou noted that scientific-sounding rationales often served political aims.
"As it was during the One-child Policy era, it continues to be the case that the language of science and seemingly scientific rationale are actively co-opted to lend a sense of legitimacy to demographic goals that are inherently political," she said.
'Women as resources'
For both experts, the new tax highlighted a deeper tension that Beijing was urging people to have more children, while the structural pressures that deter young families remain largely unchanged.
Ms Impiombato's recent report on China's demographic challenges found that giving birth was increasingly being framed as a national duty in official narratives, while many young women remained sceptical of the government's intentions.
Concerns expressed on social media suggest that the end of the one-child policy was not about expanding reproductive choice, but about turning women into a resource to increase births.
China's harsh One-child Policy only ended a decade ago, replaced by a Two-child policy in 2016 and later a Three-child Policy in 2021.
Ms Impiombato said there were also signs of coercive measures, with pressure intensifying at both the legal and policy level.
In one 2023 case in the western province of Sichuan, a judge ruled that a woman who terminated a pregnancy without her husband's consent had violated his "right to procreate", setting a troubling precedent.
At the same time, several structural gaps remain unaddressed.
China has no national guarantee of parental leave for fathers, and the rollout of free pre-school education — promoted as a national initiative in August — has been uneven across provinces, according to recent media reports.
"The government is obviously aware of a lot of the challenges that face young families and women," Ms Impiombato said.
"I don't think that they have shown a willingness to tackle the things that people are the most worried about.
"The big promises seem to be more shiny … but the reality is that the local governments don't have that money."
