China colleges give 7-day romance break to students as birth rate plummets

Some colleges in China give students time-off during the springs. But the announcement from Mianyang Flying Vocational College has created created a lot of online buzz. The college's spring break, from April 1 to 7, has a specific theme of romance, says NBC.

According to the college, the spring break is aimed at allowing students to have a good time to get out of the campus and get close to nature. The college said that it implements the spring break system in the hope that students can learn to love nature, love life, and enjoy love through enjoying the spring break.

"I was thrilled when I found out about spring break. My roommates and I immediately booked a flight to Lijiang of Yunnan province and plan to have some fun there for a few days," a freshman at the college told Beijing Youth Daily, according to Chinadaily.com.


China has been seeing a steady decline in birth rates. The country's population fell last year for the first time in six decades, a historic turn that is expected to mark the start of a long period of decline in its citizen numbers with profound implications for its economy and the world.

The country's National Bureau of Statistics reported a drop of roughly 850,000 people for a population of 1.41175 billion in 2022, marking the first decline since 1961, the last year of China's Great Famine. China's birth rate last year was just 6.77 births per 1,000 people, down from a rate of 7.52 births in 2021 and marking the lowest birth rate on record.

Long-term, U.N. experts see China's population shrinking by 109 million by 2050, more than triple the decline of their previous forecast in 2019.

That's caused demographers to forecast that China will get old before it gets rich, slowing the economy as revenues drop and government debt increases due to soaring health and welfare costs.