China’s Trip.com Group Ltd. said it will offer childcare subsidies to employees for each newborn child through the age of five, part of a family-friendly program launched as birth rates decline in the world’s second-biggest economy.
Employees who have worked for the online tourism agency for three years or more will be eligible for an annual cash bonus of 10,000 yuan ($1,379) starting on their first birthday. The subsidy is part of a 1 billion yuan program the company is creating to promote working families and support employees in their planning, according to a statement published on Thursday.
The move comes as China experiences a rapid decline in its birth rate, and posted a population drop last year for the first time since the 1960s. Meanwhile, its regional rival India took the global mantle as the most populous country earlier this year.
Read more: What China’s Falling Population Means for Its Future
Trip.com’s founder and chairman James Liang said the company “aims to provide financial support that will encourage our employees to start or grow their families without compromising on their professional goals and achievements.”
Liang, whose postdoctoral studies focused on population and economics, is a well-known advocate for abolishing China’s one-child policy and has long supported measures to stem the country’s declining fertility rate.
While the rising cost of childrearing and higher education levels among women have contributed to declining fertility rates in China, some female employees also face high-pressure, potentially discriminatory work cultures that lead them to delay or abandon plans to have children. Some worry about losing opportunities for career advancement or even their jobs should they take several months of maternity leave or even just become pregnant.
China has seen its birth rate plummet over the years. The measure, which tracks the average number of lifetime births per woman, fell to 1.07 in 2022, far below the 2.1 needed to maintain the population, excluding migration.
Earlier this month, Beijing became the country’s first major city to extend insurance coverage to a slew of assisted reproductive services to ease the financial burden on couples seeking fertility help and encourage more births.
