Welcome back to Intersections,
As 2026 approaches, China is set to drop tax exemption for contraceptives, an illustration in policy of the deep demographic anxieties of the Chinese Communist Party. In this edition, we look at this story, and also examine how the same system that once enforced the “one-child” policy now monitors women’s menstrual cycles and restricts reproductive freedom — while state media frames these measures as public health initiatives.
This edition also highlights an in-depth Chinese-language report on the first lawsuit brought in China by a transgender individual against a hospital for subjecting them to “conversion therapy.” In Taiwan, meanwhile, proposed changes to the Artificial Reproduction Act would open fertility services to same-sex couples and single women, addressing a gap that has persisted for six years since marriage equality became law.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and suggestions. Please share this bulletin with others. Each section headline in this edition is shareable — just click the link icon next to any heading. And please, have a very Happy New Year!
Dalia Parete
CMP Researcher
dalia@chinamediaproject.org
CHINA:
China's Latest Demographic Lever
A tax exemption from the “one-child” policy era ends, exposing the Party's new approach to reproductive control.
Two years ago, in December 2024, China’s National People’s Congress passed a revised Value-Added Tax Law that removed contraceptives from a list of tax-exempt products — an exemption that had been in place since 1993, during the country’s “one-child” policy era. Those tax exemptions will finally be stripped away on Thursday this week, leaving contraceptive products subject to a 13 percent VAT.
Coverage of the tax change, a dramatic shift in the government’s approach to reproductive control in the face of official anxieties over the falling birth rate, has been largely confined to economic and financial outlets like the newspaper Yicai (第一財經) and the financial news portal Eastmoney (東方財富網). These outlets have framed the tax as a technical adjustment to the VAT system. Yicai noted that China also introduced childcare subsidies in 2025 — 10,800 yuan (approximately 1,530 US dollars) over three years for newborns, plus free kindergarten tuition — without connecting the contraception tax to this larger demographic strategy.
The Yangtze Evening Post (揚子晚報), a newspaper under the Xinhua Daily Media Group (新華報業傳媒集團) in Jiangsu Province, characterized public reaction in a headline as “unexpectedly calm” (反應出乎意料), suggesting the paper had anticipated stronger opposition to the tax.
Online discussion tells a different story. On Weibo, the hashtag “Why are contraceptive pills and devices now subject to tax?“ (為什麼避孕藥品和用具要收稅了) has trended for over a week. “I can’t even afford condoms — how could I afford a child?” one user wrote. Another noted: “Condoms prevent disease transmission, not just pregnancy.” A third commented: “Haha, at this rate, being single might be taxed next — single people, take note.”
The tax comes as China faces declining birth rates and the government pursues policies to incentivize childbirth.
China’s Menstruation Police
Village officials demanded mothers report menstrual dates in a public chat. Censors erased the outrage within hours.
On December 1, 2025, a WeChat group chat in Xuanwei, Yunnan Province, briefly ignited Chinese social media before censors erased nearly all traces of it. Village doctors (村医), healthcare workers supervised by China’s government health system, created a group called “Children’s Health Study Group” (兒童健康學習群) with an unambiguous directive: all mothers of childbearing age must publicly report their names, phone numbers, and dates of their last menstrual period.
Screenshots spread rapidly across Weibo, but within hours the outrage was silenced. The hashtag disappeared from search results, critical posts were scrubbed, and accounts commenting on the news had content deleted. Searching for the hashtag now yields only official coverage from Jimu News and Beijing Daily.
Collecting menstrual information in a public group chat violates China’s Personal Information Protection Law Article 28, which classifies medical and health information as “sensitive personal information” requiring individual consent. This is not an isolated incident. In October 2024, women across multiple provinces complained online about neighborhood officials calling to demand information about their last menstrual cycle.
On December 2, 2025, Jimu News (极目新闻), a news platform owned by the Hubei Daily Media Group (湖北日报传媒集团) under the Hubei Provincial Party Committee, was the first outlet to report what happened. The outlet explicitly noted that “the original post is no longer accessible.” They contacted the Xuanwei Municipal Health Bureau (宣威市衛生健康局), which stated this was “village doctors conducting pregnancy screening work, aimed at discovering pregnant women as early as possible to provide free basic public health services.” Officials acknowledged that village doctors should have conducted personalized one-on-one follow-ups rather than using group statistics.
The same day, Beijing Daily (新京報) published an article with a video and the official response from authorities in Xuanwei, who claimed that the information demanded in the chat was intended to ease the provision of fertility related services.
On December 3, 2025, the picture grew more complex. NetEase (网易) published a blog post from an account called “Incorrect” (不正確) revealing additional details. According to the blogger, when reporters first reached out on December 2, the Health Bureau’s initial response had been evasive — a staff member stated only that collecting such information was for “pregnancy management” and said it was “not convenient to disclose” whether monthly reporting was required. The more detailed explanation only came after wider public attention.
Jimu News followed up on December 3, contacting the Xuanwei Maternal and Child Health Hospital (宣威市婦幼保健院), where officials stated this was part of “pregnancy screening work” targeting all women aged 18 to 49 in the city.
The pattern of coverage suggests media have either received directives restricting original coverage or remain unsure where the red lines are. The incidents in Xuanwei are part of a broader pattern that has given rise to a new term in Chinese online discourse over the past five years — one with echoes in the former Communist Bloc.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Menstrual Police (月經警察) | yuèjīng jǐngchá
The term “menstrual police” (月經警察) emerged online in 2021 as a label for officials monitoring women’s reproductive cycles as part of China’s pro-birth policy shift. The phrase captures state surveillance that has shifted from enforcing birth limits to enforcing birth promotion.
The term gained attention in May 2021 when a Weibo post revealed that community officials in Jinsui Community, Henan Province, were asking married women to report their last menstrual dates. The phrase resurfaced in late 2024 as pro-birth campaigns intensified across China, most notably in December 2025 [See “China’s Menstruation Police” above] when authorities in Xuanwei, Yunnan province, required mothers to submit menstrual information to local officials. One netizen commented: “the menstruation police has arrived” (月經警察来了).
Searches for “menstruation police” (#月經警察#) on Weibo now only show results about Romania, where in 1966 dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu implemented policies forcing officials to monitor women’s menstrual cycles to enforce his pro-natalist agenda. Contemporary Chinese instances have been scrubbed from the platform.
The term captures Chinese women’s frustration with intrusive reproductive surveillance as authorities shift from decades of forced one-child restrictions to aggressive fertility promotion.
Conversion Therapy on Trial
WOMEN chronicles a transgender woman’s lawsuit against forced electroshock treatment — and the authorities who silenced her afterward.
On November 26, 2025, WOMEN (我们) — a Chinese-language publication on Substack that describes itself as “writing a first draft of history free of censorship” — published a detailed account of China’s first transgender “conversion therapy” lawsuit.
The article follows Ling’er (灵儿), a young transgender woman forcibly hospitalized for 97 days by her mother at a Qinhuangdao hospital in 2022 and subjected to seven electroshock treatments aimed at changing her gender identity. With support from activists abroad, Ling’er sued the hospital and secured a 60,000 yuan settlement in October 2024. After speaking to foreign media about her case, police detained her for questioning, accusing her of receiving “foreign funding” (境外勢力資金) — a charge commonly used to delegitimize civil society activists — and ordering her to stop accepting interviews.
The case exposed contradictions transgender people face in China’s legal and medical systems. While the government removed homosexuality from its psychiatric disorder classification in 2001, Ling’er’s hospital records labeled her gender identity as requiring “correction.”
The author, an activist who coordinated Ling’er’s legal support, reflects on how social institutions trap transgender people in “impossible existence” — surveilled and excluded, erased and questioned in courtrooms, hospitals, and the media.
TAIWAN:
Closing the Gap Between Marriage Equality and Parenthood
Six years after legalizing same-sex marriage, Taiwan moves to extend fertility treatments to LGBTQ+ couples and single women.
On December 11, Taiwan’s Executive Yuan approved amendments to the Artificial Reproduction Act (人工生殖法), advancing the bill to the Legislative Yuan for final approval. If passed, the legislation would extend assisted reproductive technologies — including in vitro fertilization (IVF) — to single women and lesbian couples, addressing a legal gap that has persisted since Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage in 2019. Under current law, only heterosexual couples with documented infertility diagnoses can access these services, leaving same-sex couples with costly overseas options or lengthy adoption processes.
In a report this month, Singapore-based Initium Media (端傳媒) documented the struggles couples have endured while waiting for legal reform. The outlet interviewed Huang Yu-ting (黃雨亭) and Zhang Qing-wen (章晴雯), a lesbian couple unable to access fertility services in Taiwan who traveled to the United States for IVF treatments that ultimately failed. The couple faced not just emotional exhaustion but also financial pressure — overseas treatments often exceed 180,000 US dollars with no guarantee of success. “We’ve been waiting for a long time,” they told Initium. “I really hope to be able to have and raise children in Taiwan.”
The proposed changes sparked celebration online. Lesbian influencer couple “Rabbit and Wolf” (兔女狼) shared a hopeful reaction on social media when the draft bill was submitted, with numerous responses from single women expressing hope that they might finally be able to pursue fertility treatments in Taiwan legally.
