> ..can properly incentivize more population growth ..
did the one child policy mess that up? What i understand is China is short on women and the population situation is going to get worse before it gets better.
yup - that's China's #1 problem IMHO. This is exactly why literally less than 6 months ago they implemented a three-child policy in order to incentivize more population growth with family planning, the elimination of private tutoring, etc. in an effort to drastically reduce the cost to raise a child.
China has a lot of issues, one being a questionable government for those who are not Han, but China's existential issue is making sure the population of (young) people remains high and growing steadily.
Anecdote: I've talked to many people from China, and they all say almost no one wants kids. And for similar reasons to what people say in America (cost, stress, the environment). So I don't think the policy change is going to help them, too little too late.
The end of the one-child policy brought just about zero improvement in birthrates or the demographic trajectory of the country.
I would not be very confident that any of what you are talking about is going to fix China's massive demographic problems, and such policies have generally had limited success elsewhere.
Additionally, with the new entrants to the workforce in 15-20 years already having been born, even if improvement was seen, you're talking many decades before you're going to have that said improvement in births be sufficient to stop the workforce from shrinking, dependency ratios getting worse, etc.
China loosened it's policies about 20 years too late.
did the one child policy mess that up? What i understand is China is short on women and the population situation is going to get worse before it gets better.