China’s latest fertility push is getting a new nickname online: “月经警察” (yuèjīng jǐngchá, “menstrual police”)—and it stuck after a startling request surfaced in Xuanwei, Yunnan, where women say officials wanted their menstrual dates in a WeChat group, triggering a fresh debate about privacy, reproductive autonomy, and “monitored fertility” in a country anxious about its shrinking population.
The Xuanwei episode began when an unidentified new mother posted that local authorities were requiring post-partum women to report the date of their “last menstrual period”. A widely shared screenshot showed a message in a group chat titled “Children’s Health Learning Group” telling: “Mothers of all children, please report your last menstrual period in the group in the format: name plus last menstrual period date and phone number.” If a mother was out of town, the message asked her to include her current location as well. What pushed the complaint from uneasy to enraged was the sense of routine surveillance: the mother wrote that she initially thought it was a one-time report, but “yesterday, it started again,” adding it looked like they had to report every month.
Even without an official national order to publish intimate health information in public chatrooms, the story resonated because many women across China already describe a rising tide of 催生 (cuīshēng, “pressuring people to have babies”) tactics—phone calls, texts, “surveys,” and nudges delivered by the grass-roots bureaucracy. In late 2024, it was reported that women were receiving calls from neighborhood officials—居委会 (jūwěihuì, neighbourhood committees)—asking not only about fertility intentions but directly about cycle timing. One woman described the second call as “downright intrusive,” and when she couldn’t recall the exact date, the caller reportedly said they would follow up in a few weeks to check her cycle again, prompting the now-viral complaint: “They think they’re the menstrual police?”
Other accounts, shared and amplified on Chinese platforms like 小红书 (Xiǎohóngshū, “Little Red Book”), describe a similar script. The Media quoted a viral post: “I got a call from a grassroots (worker) this morning, asking if I was pregnant,” and reported that women described being asked when they would conceive—sometimes a third child. One caller, according to a woman quoted by CNA, brushed off her work schedule and advised: “You can get pregnant first,” suggesting childcare could be handled by a mother-in-law or the woman’s own mother. These stories have helped fuel a new online shorthand—生育KPI (shēngyù KPI, “fertility KPI”)—the idea that local officials are chasing demographic targets the way offices chase performance metrics.
Reuters has also noted that, alongside subsidies and policy promises, local authorities have been cold-calling women and offering small incentives like free vitamins—moves that many women interpret less as “services” and more as pressure in an era of high costs, punishing work hours, and persistent gender discrimination. And as international coverage of China’s pro-natalist pivot widens, it increasingly includes references to menstrual data as a boundary some local actors are now willing to cross.
That’s the root of the backlash: it’s not just the question, but the power relationship behind it. Women online have framed menstrual reporting demands as a dramatic invasion of 隐私 (yǐnsī, “privacy”)—and as an echo of the state’s long history of managing reproduction, only now flipped from restricting births to encouraging them. The anger is sharpened by the method: a community WeChat group created for children’s health is a social space where women may feel unable to refuse, and where sensitive data can spread far beyond any clinic.
The snark, too, has been biting. In recent discussions, one social media user warned of a slippery slope: “Today they require all women to report the time of their period, tomorrow it will be reporting the time of sexual intercourse… [this is] mass breeding.” The crude exaggeration carries a serious point: when women hear officials asking about menstruation, they don’t hear “health outreach”—they hear monitoring, coercion, and a state peering into the most personal calendar they have.
Spicy Auntie here, clutching her chili necklace a little tighter than usual, because sisters, this one made even me choke on my tea.
So now we have “月经警察” (yuèjīng jǐngchá, menstrual police). I wish this were satire. I really do. But no—this is real life in twenty-first-century China, where a woman in Xuanwei opens her WeChat and finds a polite little message asking her to report the date of her last period. Name. Phone number. Location. And please don’t forget to do it again next month. Smile emoji optional.
Let me be very clear: menstruation is not a community resource. My uterus does not belong to the neighborhood committee. My cycle is not a government spreadsheet. And no amount of pastel-colored “maternal health” language will convince women otherwise.
What really burns my chili peppers is how familiar this all feels. For decades, women were monitored to prevent pregnancy—permits, quotas, forced abortions, whispered inspections. Now the tune has changed, but the choreography is the same. Fewer babies? Panic. Declining population? Panic. And who pays the price of that panic? Surprise: women’s bodies again.
Officials say this is about “care,” “early support,” “public health.” Auntie has heard that song before. Care does not arrive via a group chat demanding menstrual data. Support does not involve asking women to recall their cycles like obedient schoolgirls reporting homework. And public health absolutely does not require broadcasting intimate biological information in semi-public digital spaces where refusal feels risky and compliance feels mandatory.
Chinese social media got it right. Women didn’t just object—they mocked, resisted, named the absurdity. “生育KPI” (fertility KPIs). “催生办” (baby-pressuring offices). Sarcasm became survival. Humor became protest. Because when power intrudes into your underwear drawer, laughter is sometimes the only armor left.
Let’s also talk about what’s not being monitored. Are employers being tracked for discrimination against pregnant workers? Are fathers being surveyed about unpaid care? Are housing prices, school fees, and 996 work schedules being “reported monthly”? Funny how monitoring always seems to flow downward—toward women, toward bodies, toward cycles.
Here’s Auntie’s unsolicited advice to anyone designing population policy: stop counting periods and start counting reasons. Women don’t need more surveillance. They need security, autonomy, childcare, decent work, and the basic dignity of being treated as adults with agency—not walking wombs with Wi-Fi.
Until then, sisters, guard your data like your secrets, sharpen your sarcasm, and remember: if the state wants your period calendar, it has already forgotten what consent looks like.