Trip.com Group committed on Friday it will be providing 50,000 yuan (S$9,300) to employees for each child they have starting July 1 – the first such plan enforced by a prominent private company in China as the nation is dealing with the problem of an ageing population. The company, one of the world’s most prominent online travel agencies, with 400 million users, said it would splurge a parental cash subsidy of amount 10,000 yuan yearly for five years for every child who takes birth to its employees universally.
The programme will charge about 1 billion yuan (S$186 million), the company revealed. “I have always had an opinion on this that the government should be providing financial support to families with children, especially to the families who have the responsibility of several children, to uplift more young people to fulfil their willingness of having multiple children,” Trip.com executive chairman James Liang declared in a statement. Because of one-child policy that was enforced from 1980 to 2015, demographers have notified that China will get old before it gets wealthy, as its workforce is reducing and indebted local governments splurge more on their elderly population.