Chinese online travel agent Trip.com to subsidise employee newborns as country’s population crisis deepens

Chinese online travel giant Trip.com is offering 50,000 yuan (US$6,897) in subsidies to employees who give birth, a policy that puts the company at the forefront of corporate efforts to address China’s declining population.

According to a statement by the Shanghai-based company, all employees with three years of service are entitled to the programme. Starting Saturday, eligible workers who have newborns will receive 10,000 yuan on each of the first five birthdays of their child. The company said it has earmarked 1 billion yuan for the scheme so far.

The move comes as the country is awakening to a demographic crisis after four decades of notorious birth controls imposed by the central government. China’s population peaked in 2022 as the number of births fell below 10 million for the first time, a trend that is expected to continue.

James Liang, co-founder and executive chairman of Trip.com, has been warning about China’s demographic crisis for years, calling for the state to do more to reduce the cost of childbearing and to boost fertility rates. As early as 2015, when the Chinese government still levied hefty fines on “excessive” births, Trip.com introduced an internal policy of providing interest-free loans, up to 200,000 yuan, to employees who had to pay the fine.

In a statement announcing the new incentive policy, Liang said, “Enterprises should play roles within their capacity to build up … a benign atmosphere for reproduction.”

In a separate staff-wide email sent out on Friday, Trip.com chief executive Jane Sun said the company could relate to the financial burdens of raising a child, and believes the subsidies could help with educational and other child-raising expenses incurred by employees.

China, which was dethroned by India as the world’s most populous country this year, has now implemented an official “three-child” policy and ended fines for excessive births.