For university students, sperm donation could be a way to earn money and also contribute to countering China’s falling fertility rate. Several sperm donation clinics across China, including in Beijing and Shanghai, have recently appealed to university students to donate sperm.
The country-wide appeals to donate sperm have become a trending topic on China’s Twitter-like Weibo with users discussing the issue, state media reports claimed. Threads on the topic have been viewed over 240 million times this week.
Among the first to appeal to university students for sperm donation was the Yunnan Human Sperm Bank in southwest China on February 2. The announcement introduced the benefits, registration conditions, subsidies and sperm donation procedures.
It prompted similar appeals from other sperm banks in other provinces and cities across China.
“Sperm banks in other places, including northwest China’s Shaanxi (province), have published similar appeals. The public was intrigued and discussion became heated partly because the appeals were made after China’s population recorded a decrease in 2022, the first decline in six decades,” the state-run tabloid, Global Times, said in a report on Friday.
Different sperm banks issued different requirements for donors.
According to Yunnan’s sperm bank, donors should be aged between 20 and 40, taller than 165 cm, have no infectious or genetic diseases, and should hold or be pursuing a degree.
“The donor needs to go through a health check and those who qualify will make 8-12 donations, with a subsidy payment of 4,500 yuan ($664),” the GT report said.
The Shaanxi sperm bank wanted donors to be at least 168 cm and said the subsidy for a complete donation would be 5,000 yuan ($734).
While a Shanghai sperm bank offered the highest subsidy of 7,000 yuan ($1000), one in Beijing possibly had the strictest requirements: Those who did not qualify included the bald, smoked or consumed alcohol and suffered from severe nearsightedness and hypertension.
China’s population recorded negative growth for the first time in 61 years, decreasing by 850,000 in 2022, official data released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) showed in January.
According to the NBS, the number of newborns on the mainland has been dropping for five consecutive years since 2017, after the figure reached 18.83 million in 2016, the official news agency, Xinhua reported in January.
China scrapped its decades-long one-child policy in 2015, allowing all couples to have two children, and followed it up In 2021 by allowing couples to have a third child. The change in policy, however, is yet to have the desired effect despite government initiatives.
