Understanding China’s New Fertility Policy System through ‘Incrementalism’: Inferences from Online Articles Published by China Population and Development Research Center

Abstract: In the ongoing transformation from previous “one-child policy” to current “two-/three-child policy” in China, the newly issued “supporting measures” system is highlighted to be crucial to boosting fertility. Extant studies on the issue are mostly limited to idealized discussions, while lacking a Public Administration perspective to comprehensively understand the real policy process. To compensate for this shortage, the thesis introduced Lindblom’s ‘incrementalism’ theory to interpret the policy process mainly by finding out and elaborating the divergent preferences among different “supporting measures” in actual implementation. Empirical data were collected by gathering 292 relevant online articles that China Population and Development Research Center posted on WeChat Official Account from October, 2016 to February, 2022. Content analysis and qualitative content analysis were chosen as appropriate methods to analyze the data in a coherent way. The results proved the existence of Chinese government’s discernable preferences among different “supporting measures” as deducted from ‘incrementalism’ theory-- “Childcare services” and “Maternal and child health protection” were most preferred, following by “Education reform”; “Work-family balance” and “Reducing gender inequality” were less preferred, while “Direct financial support” and “Housing support” were least preferred. Their divergent features were further interpreted by investigating how they were diversely formulated and justified.