Moreover, the rabidly anti-natal propaganda of the policy has helped to create a culture in which children are no longer valued but rather rejected as expensive luxuries. When the government finally ended the one-child policy in 2016, it rosily predicted that the total fertility rate — defined as the number of births per woman over her reproductive lifetime — would rebound to 1.8. But China’s birthrate not only did not recover, it continued to fall. In 2022, only 9.56 million children were born.