Under China’s Population and Family Planning Law, married couples may have up to three children. That ceiling, set by an August 20, 2021 amendment passed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, replaced the two-child limit that had been in place since 2016. The same body of law, together with related regulations, also governs how a birth is registered, what workplace protections new parents receive, what financial support the state provides, and who can access fertility treatment. The China baby law framework, in other words, is much broader than the headline number suggests.
How Many Children You Can Have
Three is the current legal limit for married couples. The National Health Commission is the primary agency responsible for implementing family planning policy, with local health bureaus handling day-to-day work like issuing family planning certificates.
The 2021 amendment also formally abolished the social maintenance fee, the financial penalty that had been the government’s primary enforcement tool for decades. That fee could reach three to ten times a family’s annual income at its peak, and the government collected an estimated 2 trillion yuan (roughly $314 billion) in total since 1980. It is gone.
What the law does not clearly spell out is what happens to a family that has a fourth child. The three-child ceiling remains on the books, but no financial penalty is specified for exceeding it. In practice, families with more than three children are unlikely to face fines in most jurisdictions, though they may run into administrative friction: difficulty accessing subsidies designed for families within the policy, or complications at birth registration if local officials interpret the rules rigidly.
Do You Have To Be Married
The national family planning law is built around married couples. A marriage certificate has historically been required for nearly everything connected to having a child in China, from obtaining birth permits to registering the baby to accessing prenatal care. The law does not specifically mention single or unmarried mothers, which placed children born outside marriage in a legal gray zone where parents could face social compensation fees and difficulty accessing services.
Several provinces have moved to close that gap on their own. Sichuan, Guangdong, and Shaanxi have updated local regulations so that unmarried parents can register births without financial penalties. In Sichuan, all citizens, including unmarried parents, can register the birth of their children. The national law has not been amended to explicitly protect single parents, so what you experience depends heavily on where you live.
Registering a Birth
A child born in China needs two documents to exist in the eyes of the state: a Medical Certificate of Birth and a hukou registration. The steps run in that order, and skipping either creates lasting problems.
Medical Certificate of Birth
The delivering hospital issues the Medical Certificate of Birth, which has been the standard nationwide birth document since 1996 under the Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care. It records the time and place of birth, identifies both biological parents, and serves as legal proof of the child’s existence and parentage.1Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. China: Information Contained in Birth and Notarial Certificates Without it, you cannot register the child with the police.
Hukou Registration
The hukou is China’s household registration system, and it is arguably the single most important administrative record a person has. It ties legal identity to a specific geographic location and determines which schools a child can attend, which hospitals provide subsidized care, and how a person interacts with government services generally. Registration is handled by the local Public Security Bureau in the area where one of the parents holds their own hukou.2Congressional-Executive Commission on China. CECC Special Topic Paper: China’s Household Registration System: Sustained Reform Needed to Protect China’s Rural Migrants
Parents typically need to present the Medical Certificate of Birth, the parents’ resident identity cards, the household registration booklet, and a marriage certificate. For children born out of wedlock, some jurisdictions waive the marriage certificate requirement but may ask for a paternity test instead.3Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Responses to Information Requests: China Hukou Registration Failing to register a child in the hukou system effectively renders the child invisible to the state, blocking access to public education, healthcare, and eventually employment.
Workplace Rights for Parents
Chinese labor law protects new parents in several distinct ways, and the protections have real teeth. Labor arbitration panels regularly rule against employers who work around them through restructuring or forced resignations.
Maternity Leave
The Special Provisions on Labor Protection of Female Employees, issued by the State Council in 2012, set a national floor of 98 days of paid maternity leave. A mother can begin her leave up to 15 days before the expected delivery date. Complications add 15 days. Each additional baby in a multiple birth adds another 15 days. Many provinces layer local extensions on top of the national minimum, so actual leave often exceeds 98 days depending on where the employee’s social security is registered.
Paternity Leave
Paternity leave is set at the provincial level. Shanghai offers 10 days at the low end; Yunnan, Gansu, and Tibet provide up to 30 days. Most provinces have settled on 15 days. Shaanxi grants extra time when spouses live in different locations or when the birth is a third child.
Nursing Breaks
Working mothers are entitled to one hour of paid breastfeeding time per day until the child turns one, taken as a single break or as two 30-minute sessions. The right exists whether or not the mother is actually breastfeeding; it is framed as childcare time more broadly.
Job Protection
Employers cannot dismiss a woman or reduce her pay because she is pregnant, giving birth, or breastfeeding. The Labor Contract Law reinforces this by prohibiting both no-fault dismissal and economic layoffs targeting women in these protected periods. If a labor contract is set to expire during pregnancy or breastfeeding, it must be extended automatically until the protected period ends.
Government Support for Families
China’s approach has flipped from penalizing excess births to subsidizing them. Three programs matter most to new parents.
Tax Deductions
Parents can deduct 2,000 yuan (roughly $280) per month from taxable income for each child under three for childcare costs. The same 2,000 yuan monthly deduction applies for each child’s education expenses from preschool through graduate school. Both amounts doubled from 1,000 yuan per month starting January 1, 2023.4State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. China Announces Further Reduction on Individual Income Tax For a family with two children under three, that comes to 4,000 yuan per month in reduced taxable income.
National Childcare Subsidy
In 2025, the State Council introduced a nationwide childcare subsidy of 3,600 yuan (about $500) per year for each child under three. The subsidy is exempt from individual income tax and does not count as household income when determining eligibility for social assistance programs such as subsistence allowances.5The State Council of the People’s Republic of China. China to Offer Nationwide Childcare Subsidies Many provincial and municipal governments add cash grants on top of this national program, particularly for second and third children, though amounts vary widely by region.
Maternity Insurance
Employees enrolled in China’s social insurance system have access to maternity insurance, which covers prenatal examinations and inpatient delivery costs and pays maternity allowances during leave. A draft healthcare security law reviewed in 2026 would extend coverage to nonworking spouses.6National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China. Maternity Insurance Coverage to Be Widened
Fertility Treatment and Surrogacy
China’s rules on assisted reproduction are stricter than many people expect, and they interact with the marriage requirement in ways that particularly affect single women.
Access to IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies is limited to married couples dealing with infertility. The Administrative Measures for Human Assisted Reproductive Technology, issued by the Ministry of Health in 2001, prohibit clinics from providing these services to single women. The National Health Commission has acknowledged that single women have procreative rights in principle but has said the exercise of those rights “requires further examination and deliberation.” In practice, unmarried women cannot access IVF, egg freezing for non-medical purposes, or other fertility treatments at licensed clinics anywhere in the country. Jilin Province has a local ordinance that theoretically permits single women to use ART, but clinics there still follow the national ban because no guidance has been issued to override it.
Commercial surrogacy is prohibited outright. Article 3 of the Administrative Measures for Human Assisted Reproductive Technology bars medical institutions and personnel from performing any form of surrogacy, and the Technical Specifications for Human Assisted Reproductive Technology, issued in 2003, reinforce this ban. Courts have granted narrow exceptions in a handful of cases involving widows seeking to use embryos created with their deceased husbands, but these are extraordinary circumstances rather than a path available to the general public.