The most common nationwide subsidy is 3,600 RMB per child per year, which is basically ineffective. For a woman on maternity leave, the government will subsidize her based on her salary, which can be substantial—in places like Shanghai it could reach 200,000–300,000 RMB—but still not enough to stimulate population growth.
To put it in a darker perspective: the only way to truly boost birth rates would be to reduce women’s rights or compensation, which is unlikely in any civilized country. A historical example is Romania.
So in my understanding, China has only two viable paths: solve the cost of raising children through household robots or by means of coercion, the government could require state-owned enterprise employees and Communist Party members to have children. China has 100 million Party members and roughly tens of millions of SOE employees. SOE employees usually have stable benefits and income, so childbirth could be tied to salary, benefits, or promotion opportunities. To some extent, this could be argued as reasonable—after all, they are supported by taxpayers and arguably should contribute to society. But it still counts as a rather dark idea, and I imagine it would be a last-resort option.
So I’ve always felt that China’s ambition extends only to Taiwan, and Taiwan is the endpoint. After all, the people on Taiwan are Chinese too, sharing the same culture and ethnicity. Another point that people might overlook is that China’s approach to incorporating outsiders is based on cultural identity rather than racial identity, which is the opposite of the U.S. In the U.S., you can come in, bring your own culture, help reshape American culture, and still become an American. In China, you can only be considered Chinese if you adopt Chinese culture.
Of course, sometimes we discuss online hypotheticals like whether it would be good for China to annex Mongolia or Myanmar. From a purely military perspective, it would be very easy for China. But almost no one supports it, because our way of thinking dictates that it would require an enormous cost to transform those populations into Chinese culture, and that cost is simply not worth it. Trade and cooperation are the best approach.
Or Beijing could ban birth control and rely on the natural human sex drive to increase the birth rate.