Hello, welcome to Roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin.
China has officially entered a new era of demographic policy with the release of the draft child care services law.
With enrollment rates for children under three currently hovering around 8, the central government is moving to treat child care not as a private luxury, but as a basic public service.
This draft introduces a mandatory national qualification system and background checks, signaling a move to professionalize a sector long dominated by less regulated, rather expensive private providers.
Today we analyze the hard rules of the blueprint and what it means for the country's 15th five-year plan.
For this episode, I'm joined by Fei-Fei and Steve Hatherly.
Let's be honest, raising a human under the age of three is a full-time job that usually pays in exhaustion and sticky handprints.
Here in the country, one in three Chinese families want professional child care, yet only 8 actually have it.
Why is there such a massive gap?
And can this new draft law finally make dropping the kids off safe, affordable and even inclusive for the older families in the society?
So let's first take a look at the new regulation here.
What are the new policies and, in this draft law, what are some clauses that are getting people's attention?
So, by the end of 2025, China unveiled a draft national law called the Child Care Services Law, which aims to expand a nationwide childcare support from the government.
The draft is still being under review by the legislator, but still we can get some of the glimpse into what the future childcare system would look like.
So basically, the draft law aims to promote and regulate the sector of child care, especially for children under the age of three.
That's when I think most currently the current public kindergarten system hasn't covered this group of the society.
And they are also aiming to lower the cost of raising their children and ease the burden in households and support a more family-friendly society building.
Yeah, this covers everything from child care institutions to personnel, to service provision, to support measures, to oversight, all the way to legal responsibilities.
And it expands on a draft from 2019, a 2019 national regulation that expanded parental leave and also encouraged the development of care services for children again under the age of three.
This one, though.
This one's more expansive, and it also assigns responsibility for implementation to local governments.
And it is in the draft stage now.
So it's open for public comment.
Good timing if you have any suggestions.
Yeah, exactly.
And I'm sure people have a lot of opinions on this.
So from sorry, from December 27th of last year to the 25th, which is coming up very soon on the calendar of this year, in January,
This is the really critical time for parents and professionals to offer those opinions that they undoubtedly have before the law becomes finalized.
I love it when we provide very detailed services, the kind of information that people might need when it comes to the governing of the country.
And yeah, you can submit your comments, your sense into child care system building.
Yes, ccroundtablepodcast.qq.com.
And for those of you who have an idea about China, you might already know it's a vast country.
It has a large population. yet we face similar problems like many countries in the world.
That is not enough in the sense that many when it comes to newborn in the country, we see a decreasing number of newborns.
In 2020, the number of newborns is around 12 million.
And then we see in 2021, it's Around 10 million and then 2022, 9.5 million.
And this year 2020.
Well, last year, 2025 is not announced just yet, but it's estimated to be around 87 million, which means we're seeing a decreasing number of newborn.
And there are definitely many reasons people wanted to delay their delivery, delay getting into a new stage of their life.
They want to enjoy life a bit more.
They feel like they're not ready.
But it is definitely the society's responsibility to create a kind of environment that is more conducive for those who are raising a young kid.
I think it's quite clear that this new draft related to child care is very closely connected to wanting people to have some more babies.
Of course.
And that is why we already mentioned that in 2019 there has been a guideline, kind of regulation, a kind of opinion helping different sectors, including local governments and private sector, to know what are the directions the country want us to move towards when it comes to young children's care.
But at that time I remember quite um vividly.
At that time we were talking about encouraging more private institutions to provide the kind of child care for, especially those who are under the age of three.
But now we see, one highlight here is that we're moving from the having or encouraging the market to explore to allowing local government to take more responsibilities, not just allowing local governments uh, With this new plan they wouldn't just be observers.
They would be legally mandated to include child care in their socioeconomic development plans.
This requires, or would require them to allocate specific funds and also land which is an interesting kind of side note to this for child care facilities.
And that would be to ensure that these services are built into the very fabric of new residential neighborhoods.
Yeah because Steve, you mentioned a very interesting point about the land allocation when it comes to local government's responsibilities, because when we speaking of child care facilities, I think the top one question would be where that facility is going to be.
Build them where?
Good question.
And, for example if, for example, a company want to rent a place, the rent would be sometimes expensive, especially considering cities like Beijing and Shanghai Shenzhen, where the price is just skyrocketing.
Well, you'd have to assume it would be very expensive because You'd have to think that these places wouldn't be on some hidden floor of some building somewhere in some place in the city that's hard to get to.
They would have to be in neighborhoods and yeah, in Beijing, where it would be expensive, and other big cities too.
Maybe you're looking at second floor locations, third floor, maybe even first floor locations, and that's going to be more expensive there than the hidden places I was talking about.
And also safety is another concern.
And also when it comes to parents.
We are parents.
We want our children, especially under the age of three, have the space to walk around, to move around, get enough sunlight, you know, get exposed to the fresh air.
And that means probably renting like a third floor inside an office building would not be an ideal place for these childcare facilities.
But who's going to be there to find a perfect place for children?
I mean governments would definitely need half the capacity and resources to step in and, you know, look around their communities and to see where exactly can these places be found.
And I think, another very interesting issue like a qualification system for people working inside this facility.
Yeah, speaking of who's going to be there.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think, when it comes to these sending your children under the age of three, some of them are still not being able to function independently in our human society.
Parents get very anxious when it comes to who are going to be there around my kid eight hours a day taking care of them.
And that is the question that we have been already providing answers for quite a long time.
We do have a system called a Nursery Caregiver Vocational Certificate.
And nowadays, with the private sectors and private institutions around the country, in different cities, Those who are working in these places some of them are professional childcare or caregivers and those people they would have this certificate.
But also, for example, in my kids' kindergarten.
There's also those.
We call them teachers for your living or life teachers.
生活老师
Yes, and those people are caregivers more than educators.
And those are not only for the kids under the age of three, but also in the kindergarten stage, which is between three to six or seven.
So there's that.
That certificate was to test or to find out whether or not the skills this person acquires there is enough to take care of a young kid.
Yeah, so it functions more like a training-based credential rather than a practice license or a license to practice.
So the current vocational certificate is designed perhaps for home or better, for home-based care, where caregivers serve maybe one family at a time.
But the new qualification system is geared toward group environments, unlike children's centers.
Childcare centers, nursery classes are kindergartens and the goal here is to address the lack of unified standard.
So the draft, the draft law, it proposes this national qualification exam and registration system for child caregivers.
More details from that.
So the way they'll break that down, it's going to be a three-tier title junior, middle and senior and it will give child care workers a professional status and also a promotion path similar to what school teachers have.
And again, that replaces the current evaluation system with a national qualification system and a unified registration process for all child care staff.
So that's making caregivers more likely, more of a yearning job position that young people may be interested in.
Because, if you are now, when we are talking about current caregivers, we're thinking about nannies who's been going to be nanny for the rest of their life.
There is no like a ladder to climb inside this career path.
When looking into the future, you know, you've been nanny for like 10 years.
What about the next step?
There's no next step.
Just moving on from family to family.
But now for especially young people, and I think Having young people as caregivers is also very important.
And there is a path for them.
You have development.
There is a future for you.
You have a next step to climb onto.
And I think this is especially important.
Yeah, what's making me, as a parent, quite happy and reassured is the fact that the draft specifies that child care centers must conduct criminal background.
I was just about to say yeah, that's very important because there would be a blacklist to be built to exclude anyone with a history of violence, abuse or drug use.
That's very important because now we know many of the records of criminal records, Because in China here, you can either break the law or be considered as a criminal.
There are different levels or different types of regulations and law to break.
And, as any company or any individual, it is not allowed to break, have a sneak peek into other people's records.
But for those who are working or for those who are opening this kind of child care centers, they would have the access to know the background information of the personnel they're about to hire, which is very much reassuring.
Absolutely, you want to know who's taking care of your three-year-old.
Yeah, you ask some questions about them and they say like oh, you just don't, You don't want that as the answer.
No.
And here we know that we already have this 2019 version of opinion or guideline, something you can follow.
But now we're making it into a specific specialized child care service law.
And that's necessary because?
Well because, first of all, there is a gap in reality, in practice, when it comes to childcare, not only about numbers, but also about quality.
Because, according to an official report released in 2024 they look at numbers in 2023 and China had about three childcare slots per 1000 people.
So totaling like a little over 4 million slots nationwide, and thinking about that's not going to be enough.
And surveys also show that more than 30 of families with children under the age of three need a child care services.
So it's really hard sought after services.
But also, I think, for parents.
They are in need for their services, but they also have this mistrust, distrust issues when it comes to sending your kid into these child care facilities, simply because of the concerns when it comes to the quality that these services are providing.
Yeah, I mean, there's a number of issues.
Obviously, the demand is there.
30% of families, we mentioned these stats a couple of times, but they're worth repeating.
30 of families have a need for the child care services under 8 um.
Take advantage of those.
The enrollment rate now, if you compare that to oecd countries, where the member country's enrollment rate is 35 percent, and in china it's much, much lower.
So that's when we compare it to a global situation and we can find comparisons to the global situation, depending on which angle or which lens we look at this situation through.
And one of the comparisons that i think we can make is the cost.
It's expensive globally And it's expensive here in China too.
In 2023, private providers made up nearly 90% of all child care institutions.
So almost all of them.
And they were charging an average of 1,978 yuan per child per month.
That's about $280 per month.
And that accounts for about 60%, over 60% of the average disposable income per person.
Now, I'm not a math expert, but that says to me that it's unaffordable for a lot of families out there.
Yes, and we have a third-party survey revealing that over 80 of families are willing to accept a fee range between 500 to 2000 yuan.
And still there are about 20 percent of families report being unable to afford those costs, making one of the largest reasons not for not using a child care services.
And if you really think about it, there are different options, especially here in the chinese, in china, in the chinese society that is, you can, as a parent, decide to take two or three years as gap year and take care of the kid.
You can seek help from the older generation, from the grandparents of the kid, and you can hire a nanny.
And there are definitely pros and cons for each choice.
What we're trying to do here is to make the pro list of sending kids to child care services a bit longer and the con list a bit shorter.
And one thing to do that or one way to achieve that goal is to lower the cost.
Yeah, because if we look on paper, we talked about the shortage on paper.
There are services available, pardon me here, but 90% of them are privately owned.
So, okay, that tells us that there's a shortage here in the country.
But there's only 46% of existing childcare slots that are actually in use.
So on paper, there's a shortage, but in actuality, the slots aren't being filled.
And one of the big reasons is 20% of families, it's beyond their means.
That means for every five kids for the statistics of the families that want their child to have child care services provided for them.
One of those kids, they just can't afford to do it.
Some kids or some parents find the institutions a bit too expensive.
Some parents may find the institutions providing the kind of services or care for the kids not enough or not up to their standards.
Especially when compared to the expensive price.
Yes.
And also, I've never really been to send my kid to any of the Chinese caregiver facilities.
But when I was living in Australia...
I do send my kid to one of the daycare they call it daycare centers which is for children preschool age children.
And they're also very expensive.
And it was about five to six years ago, it was charged $130,000. australian dollars a day a day a day and now i checked the price again it's climbing it's about 180 us uh australian dollars a day which is about 120 us dollars any subsidies well i think the government covers a part of it but if you are for example or working both parents work you want your parent you want your kids in these daycare centers five days a week But the government only covers, well, depending on the state, covers about 70% of the expense.
It's about three days a week?
Yeah, two to three days a week.
So it's still not enough if you're thinking about you are paying...
24 US dollars out of your pocket just for daycare centers.
Yes, expensive.
And Australia is only one example.
If we take a look at the global situation, in different countries there are different ways and different common ways to raise a kid in just one society, because of the condition of a society.
We see in some countries, many parents choose to have one person living and taking care of as the family's family caregiver yes, like a stay-at-home parent.
Stay-at-home parent that's very common in some countries, especially in the kind of countries that provide a relatively major subsidy for the parent who decided to stay at home, and also in some other countries we see that they also adopt a daycare kind of service.
Yeah um, i looked at canada because i was curious to know what what the country did in terms of childcare.
So there's a Canada national plan with federal funding to cap licensed daycare fees.
And what the aim was for an average of 10 a day.
You said it was 130 a day in Australia five years ago, up to 180 a day now if it's uncovered.
But the goal in Canada was $10 a day by 2026.
The program started a few years ago, but it depends on the province, right?
Canada has provinces, and you'll find different prices in different provinces.
For example, I believe it was $22 a day in Ontario.
Ontario is where Ottawa and Toronto are.
And five of Canada's 13 provinces and territories have reached that 10 a day childcare goal ahead of schedule.
But others have reduced their fees and tried to take measures.
But it's still a challenge for the country to try to achieve that goal.
The goal is to make it affordable.
But I don't know if they've fully gotten there just yet.
And like all or many countries in the world, we see these kind of challenges and we find different ways to solve them.
And even before this draft law, we see different local governments are adopting different methods.
For example, here in Beijing, we talked about the affordability of it.
In fact, the municipal and district governments have already jointly provided subsidies for 1000 yuan per child per month, along with rent subsidies of up to 5 yuan per square meter per day for those inclusive childcare centers.
That's what's happening here in Beijing and also in Shanghai.
Since 2023, Shanghai has been developing, opening new and establishing all these kind of childcare centers, especially for the kids under the age of three, in different communities.
And they've even tried a place in, I think, it's an industrial park area where there are a lot of companies.
So their kids or the parents would be able to take the kids to work and drop them in the centers. that's a good way to do it and also in Hangzhou what they're doing is also very interesting they started a 15-minute child care service circle which would integrate not only families communities and workplaces but also medical services into these kind of child care centers so that the kid would no longer need to go to the local community health centers.
So that is another way of doing it.
But we can see.
When this new draft law is passed, receiving a lot of suggestions, do a bit of adjustment and passed, a lot of new changes might happen in this sector for parents, for institutions, for professionals.
Yeah, when it comes to a law building, we are talking about law.
What Honglin just described are mostly, you know, local policies.
If the local governments have the will have the funds to do that.
But now, with these childcare services law, I think we are putting the country is putting childcare under three childcare services into a national plan.
That means Sometimes you can see them rolling out in more areas, especially considering rural areas, which I think are more in need of these services and don't have a lot of choices compared to parents in Beijing and Hangzhou and Shanghai.
Maybe different standards, too.
Yeah, exactly.
And also, I think, when it comes to these, a lot of parents actually, they didn't realize the importance of education for children between the age of zero to three, which is still very important.
It's not like you just feed them, put them into bed and put on diapers.
It's not as simple as that.
There are also developmental things that these children can develop when it comes to their nervous system, their motor skills, their sensory development and their language abilities.
And I don't think nannies currently can really help a lot with this development.
And I think, with this law in place, not only the services will be more accessible, will be more affordable, but will be more into the system fabricated, building inside the fabric of the system, so that people know that.
It's also something that my children need have some learning that need to do.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think any parent out there thinks that a human only starts developing at the age of three.
But it's such a tricky topic, isn't it?
Because there's so many different ways to look at this.
First, you have to be able to afford it.
And then once you can afford it, then you look at what you brought up before, Ngo Hung Lin.
Okay, what I'm paying for, does the quality match the price?
What's going on inside of these institutions?
Where are these institutions?
Who's working at these institutions?
We talked about that already.
Are they credited people?
Do they have a background in this field?
There's a lot of different things that need to be tackled when you're looking at implementing something on a national level.
Now, I keep coming back to the cost, but I think this is important.
We talked about the cost for the families, but what about the costs for the childcare centers themselves?
This is worth talking about, I think.
So the draft law will encourage local government.
We talked about the role of local governments here.
They'll encourage local government-led guidance prices and that will mandate that children's centers be charged residential rates for utilities.
We're talking about water and electricity and gas.
And that will directly lower operating costs and consequently reduce tuition fees for parents, making the institutions more affordable.
Now, I didn't realize this before, but I was chatting with Fei-Fei about this before the show.
In China and this is true in other countries, of course as well there are different tiers or categories for utility prices.
And there are two main categories here.
One is residential rates.
So if you're paying a residential rate for your utilities, then they are subsidized and they're lower rates that are charged to families for home use.
The government keeps these rates low as kind of a basic public service.
Then you've got your commercial or your industrial rates and these are significantly higher rates that are charged to businesses and factories and shops and other for-profit entities.
If you can take these child care institutions that would have been charged commercial or industrial rates for their utilities and that's just one example make them charge the residential rates.
That's an opportunity for them to save money.
They can pass those savings on to the parents.
And one thing that would definitely happen is that the current kindergartners who are giving care and education to those over the age of three would find it very much motivating to also start one or two classes for those who are under the age of three.
It sounds easy, but definitely they need to have support, separate spaces for the younger kids.
They need to have the kind of caregivers who are professional enough to be able to take care of kids who might not even be able to communicate, and maybe in certain places they would even provide rooms for parents to come and for breastfeeding areas.
So those are the adaptation that the kindergartens would make.
But think about their strengths.
They already know how to take care of really young kids.
They already have the space for not only the classrooms but also playground, which is very, very important for young age kids.
Outdoor time is very important for their development.
And another thing that is quite interesting is that now their mandate to hire those with a professional certificate, and both the facilities, the institutions and the professional caregivers are bearing responsibilities.
So for previously.
Perhaps if a private institution hire those who are only taking care of the kids based on their natural love and care, that's the responsibility falling onto the institutions.
But now, as long as you're working in this profession, you would need the professional knowledge, you would need a certificate which would make the entire caregiver sector more professional and safe and trustworthy.
Yeah, I think about when I tried to talk with one of the caregiver.
Well, more of a private kindergartens in Beijing and they are opening also, opening to children under the age of three, from two to three.
And one of the teachers working there or caregiver working there is actually a writer retiree from a previous public kindergarten.
And I asked about her credentials.
And she said, not only I have more than 30 years of taking care of children, I have love for them.
I know it's nice and very kind of her to share this passion and love for the children, but still that sort of reinforce my trust issue with this in facilities is that I can't rely on your personal emotions about my children's one year's time in this facility.
I need some systematic protection.
And I think with these current law, with these more of a systematic change for these professionals, with exams, with licensing required for these professionals.
According to the law, this means anyone caring for children must pass a state run exam and meet specific educational requirements.
They're shifting this I have love for children job to a more of a recognized profession with not only dignity but also you know boundaries and standards.
I know what you mean.
I know what you mean and and it does sound a little mean to say, but you don't mean it that way and i think you're completely fair and i think that's what every parent would think.
If you go and you want to hire a chef for a restaurant and you say, tell me about your experience as a chef, i love cooking.
And they say, if they say well, you know, i love food and i've been eating for 35 years, oh great, Do you have a certificate for that?
Right.
I mean, it sounds like a little bit of a jerk thing to say, but you're talking about parents who are wanting the best for their children.
Yes, and now here in China, we see there are more than 120000 childcare-related companies currently in operation and over 15000 new registrations in 2025 alone.
And I believe with this new possible.
Now it's still a draft law, but when it passed we can see the expansion of the industry and definitely more and more professional talent getting into this industry, which would be much assuring to us as parents.
