https://archive.is/20231109141208/https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/09/china-wants-women-to-stay-home-and-bear-children
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It's hilarious that capitalist rags like the economist want their lib readers to fear Xi by making him out to be some authoritarian conservative.
Also funny: central government wants local governments to invest in good toilets, the gall! How dare they support improving public services! 
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https://archive.is/20231109140845/https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/09/xi-jinping-wants-china-to-have-better-toilets
Also, "we should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture" actually doesn't sound regressive or conservative, at least that little quote on its own. It sounds like Xi wants society to support pregnant people and people with children in new and better ways. Of course, we simply don't have the context of this quote, so it's hard to actually draw any conclusions from it. My guess, though, is that The Economist wrote this trying to make China look as terrible as possible, so my guess is that in context, this quote sounds even better and The Economist stripped the relevant context to attempt to make China sound scary and anti-feminist. Never mind that the US (and the UK) are actually in the midst of an extremely anti-feminist moment, China is scary and bad, don't you know?
Nuclear family is the effect of traditional family model being eroded by capitalism, and is unsustainable in long periods of time as the families widely struggling to met the ends in decaying capitalist countries prove. But the traditional partiarchal family model is also outdated. I imagine in China it is even more visible than in the west, so the question of new family model is nothing weird to be stated. Cuba did it too, and the effect was the new code.
But, stated and worded like the western propaganda usually does, it sounds like some sinister social engineering and eugenics.
Oh yeah, good point, this is probably exactly what Xi was getting at. Well, hopefully China will do something as cool as Cuba's new family code! That would make my year, honestly.
The patriarchal family model is, itself, a consequence of property-based legal institutions awarding husbands and eldest male heirs the lion's share (even to the point of exclusive enfranchisement) of household capital, cash, and credit. Yes, of course men are going to dominate in a system that prohibits women from owning property or having a bank account or borrowing money.
It isn't even that the patriarchal model is outdated. It is that the individualist consumer economy contradicts and erodes the patriarchal model. And consumerism remains as much a part of Chinese culture as it does anywhere.
I'm not even sure if Xi is that opposed to patriarchy. Certainly, he doesn't seem shy about stacking his cabinet and senior staff almost exclusively with middle-aged and elder men. But he is quite clearly opposed to the excesses and wastefulness of consumer capitalism. And, in a country as big and resource hungry as China, it isn't hard to see why.
The Economist's articles are the liberal worldview distilled in a way I don't think other propaganda outlets capture in the same manner. I think it's rooted in its origins as a lobbying platform for the bourgeoisie way back in the 1840s
The rag had round 180 anniversary 2 september this year :(
Its continual existence is really proof the class struggle is real and it is the organ for the aristocracy of finance
It's crazy when you think about how old and how entrenched many of these corporations are in Western society as a whole, and how influential they are in forming public opinion.
I agree with you. The Economist is its own particular kind of terrible. I think it's the media outlet I hate the most, actually. I also hate, hate, hate that Economist articles don't have bylines. We don't get to know which particular ghoul wrote this particular reactionary nonsense article, so it's just "The Economist" having terrible opinions, as usual. Fucking cowards. Put your names to your articles so I can make fun of you personally.
It doesn't have bylines because many of them are teenagers plucked from conservative societies at universities rather than actual experts or even staff writers. It's a cheap content mill with set stories basically.
you'll probably enjoy this: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/05/how-the-economist-thinks
Maybe my view is marred by my US experience but it also could be related to how anti kid so many people are. Don't have kids if you don't want them but also people should and need to be accepting and supportive of them existing in society.