Chinese online travel agency Trip.com is preparing Rmb1bn ($140mn) in cash subsidies to encourage employees to have more babies, in one of the first instances of a local tech company working to turn around the country’s falling birth rate.The travel group, which owns booking sites including Ctrip, Skyscanner and Qunar, said it would pay out Rmb10,000 in annual bonuses to staff for each new child until the age of five. 

China’s population fell last year for the first time in decades while its birth rate also declined sharply to the lowest point on record — 6.77 births for every 1,000 people, down from 10.41 in 2019.

The scale and speed of the country’s demographic decline threatens to outpace similar crises in other ageing nations such as Japan and Italy. A UN study published this spring said that India was due to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by mid-2023.