The first time a government worker encouraged Yumi Yang to have a baby, she thought little of it. She and her husband were registering their marriage at a local office in northeastern China, and the worker gave them free prenatal vitamins, which she chalked up to the government trying to be helpful.

第一次有政府工作人员鼓励由美·杨（音）要孩子时，她没有多想。当时，她和丈夫正在中国东北的一个婚姻登记处办手续，工作人员给了他们免费的产前维生素，她以为这是政府想要提供帮助。

When an official later called to ask if she had taken them, and then called again after she did get pregnant to track her progress, Ms. Yang shrugged those questions off as well intentioned, too. But then officials showed up at her door after she had given birth, asking to take a photograph of her with her baby for their files. That was too much.

后来，政府的工作人员打来电话，问她是否服用了那些维生素；在她怀上了孩子后，他们又打来电话追踪进展情况。由美·杨还是没往心里去，觉得那些问题是出于关心。但在她分娩后，政府官员登门，要求给她和孩子拍照以便存档。这就太过分了。

“When they came to my home, that was really ridiculous,” said Ms. Yang, 28. “I felt a little disgusted.”

“他们来到我家，就太荒唐了，”28岁的由美·杨说。“我觉得有点讨厌了。”

Faced with a declining population that threatens economic growth, the Chinese government is responding with a time-tested tactic: inserting itself into this most intimate of choices for women, whether or not to have a child.

面对威胁经济增长的人口下降，中国政府正在采取一种屡试不爽的策略来应对：插手女性最私密的选择——是否要孩子。

Officials are not just going door to door to ask women about their plans. They have partnered with universities to develop courses on having a “positive view of marriage and childbearing.” At high-profile political gatherings, officials are spreading the message wherever they can.

政府工作人员不只是挨家挨户询问女性的生育计划。他们还与大学合作，开设“对婚姻和生育持积极态度”的课程。在备受瞩目的政治集会上，官员们尽其所能地传播这一信息。

官员来到由美·杨家中要求为她和她的孩子拍照，这让她很不高兴。“我觉得有点讨厌了，"她说。

“I always feel, as a woman, if you’ve done your time on this earth and haven’t given birth to another life, that’s a real pity,” Gao Jie, a delegate from the All-China Women’s Federation, told reporters during a national meeting of lawmakers in Beijing this year.

“我总觉得，作为一个女人，如果你在这个世上活过，却没有生育另一个生命，那真是个遗憾，”来自全国妇联的人大代表高洁今年在北京的一次全国人大会议上对记者说。

At the very least, the in-your-face approach makes it harder for women to tune out calls by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to get married and have babies. To some, it is outright invasive; on social media, women have complained about being approached by neighborhood officials, including some who they said called to ask the date of their last menstrual cycle.

至少，这种毫不隐晦的方式让女性更难无视中国领导人习近平关于结婚生子的呼吁。在一些人看来，这完全是侵入性的行为；在社交媒体上，女性抱怨社区工作人员联系她们，甚至有人打来电话询问她们最近一次来例假时什么时候。

Mr. Xi, who has overseen a crackdown on feminist activism, has said that promoting childbirth as a national priority is one step toward ensuring that women “always walk with the party.” (The country’s total fertility rate, a measure of the number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime, is among the world’s lowest. The rate is estimated at around 1.0, compared to 1.62 in the United States last year.)

对女权活动发起了镇压的习近平表示，将促进生育作为国家优先事项是确保女性“始终与党同心同行”的一步。（中国是世界上总和生育率最低的国家之一，这是衡量一个女性一生中生育数量的指标。中国的总和生育率估计在1.0左右，而去年美国的数字为1.62。）

The fertility campaign is also a reminder that the Chinese Communist Party has a long history of imposing its will on people’s reproductive decisions. For decades starting in the 1970s, it enforced a one-child policy, sometimes brutally. Officials fined couples who had unauthorized pregnancies and even forced some women to undergo abortions.

这场促进生育运动也提醒着人们中共长期以来一直把自己的意志强加于人们的生育决定。从上世纪70年代开始的数十年时间里，该党执行独生子女政策，有时甚至采用残酷手段实施这项政策。政府工作人员对未经批准就怀孕的夫妇处以罚款，甚至强迫一些女性去堕胎。

As China’s economy developed, the party stepped back somewhat, though it never relinquished authority altogether, ruling in 2021 that couples could have three children.

随着中国经济的发展，中共有所退让，但也从未完全放弃权威，它在2021年规定，一对夫妇可以生育三个孩子。

Now, it is rushing back into view.

现在，它正迅速回到人们的视野中。

To understand what these efforts look like, The New York Times visited multiple maternity hospitals, along with several neighborhoods where officials have highlighted their attempts to promote fertility. Of 10 women we spoke to, seven said they had been asked by officials if they planned to have children.

为了解个中详情，《纽约时报》走访了多家产科医院，以及几个社区，那里的工作人员在促进生育方面有着突出表现。在我们采访的10名女性中，有七人表示，她们曾被政府工作人员询问是否有生孩子的打算。

面对威胁经济增长的人口下降问题，中国已将提高生育率列为国家优先事项。

For many women, the government’s nagging seemed out of step with their concerns, as well as outdated. It failed to address the high cost of raising children and how they would juggle motherhood alongside their careers and other ambitions.

对许多女性来说，政府持续纠缠的同时似乎并未解决她们真正关心的问题，而且显得不合时宜。它未能解决抚养孩子的高成本问题，以及女性要如何在事业和其他抱负之间兼顾母职。

“We’re not like people born in the 1970s or ’80s. Everyone knows that people born after the ’90s generally don’t want kids,” Ms. Yang said. “Whether you want to have children is a very private issue.”

“我们不像70后、80后。大家都知道，90后普遍不想要孩子，”由美·杨说。“是否想生孩子是一个非常私人的问题。”

To the party, such comments are precisely why the new efforts — which have been labeled a campaign for a “new marriage and childbearing culture” — are so important.

对中共来说，这些言论正是这些新举措如此重要的原因，也就是所谓的“新婚育文化”运动。

“Some people believe that marriage and childbirth are only private matters, and up to each individual. This view is wrong and one-sided,” a government-run family planning association in Mudanjiang, a city of about two million in northern China, said in a news release this year.

“有些人认为，婚姻和生育是个人的私事，这种观点是错误的、片面的，”在有200万人口的北方城市牡丹江，政府下属的计划生育协会在今年的一份新闻稿中表示。

The heart of the work falls to government family planning associations, a network with hundreds of thousands of offshoots embedded in villages, workplaces and city neighborhoods. For decades, overseen by a national association, they were the main bodies that enforced the one-child policy.

政府的计划生育协会是这项工作的核心，它有着数以万计的分支机构，分布在村庄、工作单位和城市社区。几十年来，在中国计生协的领导下，它们是执行计划生育政策的主要机构。

But now, they are working instead to promote the so-called new fertility culture.

现在他们则正在努力推广所谓的新生育文化。

In Miyun, a district of Beijing with about 500,000 residents, local family planning officials have set up a 500-person propaganda team to promote the cause, according to an article published last year by the national association.

根据中国计生协去年发表的一篇文章，在有约50万居民的北京密云区，当地计生官员成立了一个500人的宣传团队来推动这项事业。

The team had contacted more than half of Miyun’s “suitably aged” couples at least six times, the article said. It also installed new artwork in a park: a life-size cutout of a man and woman walking with three children, under a slogan urging couples not to wait too long to have children.

文章称，该团队至少与密云区超过一半的“适龄”夫妇联系过至少六次。他们还在公园里设置了新的艺术作品：一个真人大小的纸板广告牌，是一男一女带着三个孩子走路，在他们上面是一个口号，敦促夫妇要适龄生育。

密云公园里的的宣传板，上面描绘了孕期不同阶段的胎儿。

The article also said that officials’ bonuses would be pegged to how successfully they promoted the new culture, though it did not specify how performance would be measured. Miyun officials declined an interview request.

文章还提到，工作人员的奖金将与他们推动新文化的成功程度挂钩，但并未具体说明绩效如何衡量。密云区的官员拒绝了采访请求。

Zhang Rongxing, 38, who was walking with her preschool-age son near the artwork on a recent morning, said that local officials had asked both over the phone and in person if she was planning on having another child.

不久前的一个上午，38岁的张荣兴（音）带着学龄前的儿子走在这幅作品附近。她说，当地的计生工作人员曾通过电话和当面询问了解她是否打算再生一个孩子。

She was not. The two she already had were enough. “It’s too much work,” she said. “Mentally, financially, in terms of time.”

她没有这个打算。她已经有两个孩子，足够了。“太辛苦了，”她说。“精神上、经济上、时间上都是如此。”

The efforts to track and influence women’s fertility plans can begin even before marriage. Many cities offer free premarital health examinations, where couples are screened for hereditary diseases and told they should ideally have children before turning 35. Several women said officials called them soon after they underwent the health examinations to tell them to collect free folic acid, a prenatal supplement.

追踪和影响妇女生育计划的努力甚至可能在婚姻之前就开始了。许多城市提供免费的婚前健康检查，对夫妇双方进行遗传病筛查，并告知他们理想情况下应该在35岁之前生孩子。几名女性表示，在接受健康检查后不久，政府工作人员就给她们打电话，告诉她们去领取免费的备孕补剂叶酸。

Officials remain involved throughout pregnancies, too. Government websites instruct women to register their pregnancies at community health centers, which are overseen by the local government.

在孕期，政府工作人员也会持续参与。政府网站指示女性在社区卫生中心登记她们的怀孕情况，这些中心由当地政府负责管理。

At a maternity hospital in Beijing, Yang Yingying, 34, said community workers had checked in throughout her pregnancy. “They say things like, I see that you’re due for an exam,” she said.

在北京一家妇产医院，34岁的杨莹莹（音）说，在她怀孕期间，社区工作人员一直在检查她的情况。“他们会说，我看你该去做检查了，”她说。

Some women told The Times they appreciated the outreach because they felt cared for. Women have also lauded other parts of the pro-fertility campaign, which include expanding child-care resources and encouraging men to help out at home.

一些女性告诉《纽约时报》，她们很感激这种关怀，因为她们感觉受到了关心。女人们还赞扬了支持生育运动的其他部分，包括扩大儿童保育资源和鼓励男性帮忙做家务。

Even those who found the questions from officials invasive said they were easy to ignore. There is no sign that the government intervention has come close to the excesses of the one-child era.

即使是那些认为官员的提问构成侵扰的人也表示，完全可以无视这些问题。没有迹象表明政府的行动已经接近独生子女时期的那种过度干预。

北京的一家妇产医院。据一些妇女描述，社区工作人员在她们怀孕期间与她们取得了联系。

Nor is it likely to, given the political backlash it would incur, said Wang Feng, a demography expert at the University of California, Irvine.

加州大学尔湾分校的人口统计专家王丰说，考虑到可能引发的政治反弹，也不太可能这样做。

Still, the government’s rhetoric about childbearing being a public responsibility showed that its overall mind-set, of trying to control women’s fertility choices, had not changed, he added.

不过，他还说，政府关于生育是公共责任的言论表明，它试图控制女性生育选择的总体心态没有改变。

“It’s exactly the same mentality as when they implemented birth controls,” Professor Wang said. “The government is, I would say, totally oblivious of how society has moved beyond them.”

“这和他们实施计划生育时的心态完全一样，”王丰说。“我想说，政府完全没有意识到社会已经超越了他们。”

Some scholars, activists and ordinary women have worried that the government could move more forcefully to limit women’s choices. The central government has pledged in several recent health plans to reduce “medically unnecessary abortions,” setting off social media frenzies from those who worried that access to the procedure could be restricted.

一些学者、活动人士和普通女性担心，政府可能会采取更有力的行动限制女性的选择。中央政府在最近的几项卫生计划中承诺减少“非医学需要的堕胎”，这在社交媒体上引发了热议，人们担心堕胎可能会受到限制。

The government has not specified what it defines as medically unnecessary, and it has made similar promises for over a decade. China has one of the world’s highest abortion rates, in part because the one-child policy made the procedure widely available. There have not been widespread reports of new obstacles. But the government’s increasingly urgent calls for more children have left many women wary.

政府并没有明确定义什么是非医学需要的堕胎，十多年来，它一直做出类似的承诺。中国是世界上堕胎率最高的国家之一，部分原因是独生子女政策使堕胎变得普遍。目前还没有关于新障碍的广泛报道。但政府越来越迫切地要求生育更多孩子，这让许多女性感到警惕。

在密云公园的另一处，一群上了年纪的居民在婴儿车旁打牌。

Those fears are heightened by the fact that, in some places, abortion access is already overseen not only by doctors but also by officials, who may have considerations other than purely medical ones. Some cities require any woman who is 14 or more weeks pregnant to obtain permission from her local family planning department before obtaining an abortion.

在一些地方，堕胎不仅受到医生的监管，也受到官员的监管，这些官员可能有单纯的医疗问题以外的考虑，这加剧了人们的担忧。一些城市要求怀孕14周及以上的妇女在堕胎前必须获得当地计划生育部门的许可。

The requirement emerged in the 2000s to prevent parents from aborting female fetuses, a practice that was prevalent during the one-child era. But in the city of Nanjing, one of the places with such a rule, officials at two family planning offices said they tried to discourage applicants generally.

这项规定是在本世纪头十年出现的，目的是防止父母打掉女性胎儿，这种做法在独生子女时代很普遍。但在实施该规定的城市之一南京市，两家计划生育办公室的官员表示，一般来说，他们会试图劝阻申请者。

The officials, who did not give their names because they were not authorized to give interviews, said they had not received any explicit guidance to do so. But they both mentioned the government’s shift to a three-child policy, and young people’s reluctance to have more children.

这些官员没有被授权接受采访，因而没有透露姓名。他们说，他们没有收到任何明确的指示。但他们都提到了政府向三孩政策的转变，以及年轻人不愿生育更多孩子。

On one office’s windows, 14 different posters promoted marriage and childbirth. “Life is the continuation of love,” one poster said, showing a young couple playing with three children.

在一间办公室的窗户上，有14张不同的宣传婚姻和生育的海报。其中一张海报上写着“生命是爱的延续，”画面上，一对年轻夫妇带着三个孩子玩耍。