I think it's more materially straightforward than that. Rice has a much higher caloric output per unit area than wheat, so east Asia along with India have historically been places of exceptionally high population density. This naturally leads to intense competition and so a very entrenched culture of pressuring children to succeed gradually developed.
Making women have children by state coercion is not what Xi was taking about and you shouldn't take western framing on the matter at face value. If you read Xi's speech in full, the main barriers to greater birth rates that he talks about are things like expensive housing, insufficient postnatal support and care for women, and frequent discrimination by employers towards women with children or who get pregnant after being hired. The implication is obviously that the main reasons women are having fewer children is because of financial pressure and insufficient support at a societal level, not that they personally have become ideologically opposed to childbirth. For the record the same is true for women in the west.
The state coerces people all the time, hat do you think land taxes and VATs are for? To get you working like good little tax cattle otherwise they’ll take away your property which you already paid for, along with the massive amounts of insurance and state taxes you have to pay just to breathe.
At least in China, the state by practice and theory, is meant to serve the people and improve the lives of people, not to function as the arm of the oligarchy as observed in the west.
Also those empty offices downtown due to WFH? Convert the office towers to residential buildings or affordable housing options. More supply, lower costs.
May not be good for the rich landlords, but plentiful affordable housing is a challenge for many and plays a role in family planning. High rent or mortgage and cost of living in general really plays a big role.
More likely the empty offices are due to economic downturn. Most cities and states give tax breaks to companies who enforce RTO because they want people in the city spending their money on coffees, food, drinks and parking fines and transport. Rather than adapting to the new world of wfh, these boomer led companies forced RTO because corporate also functions as their mental health crutch where they can lord over and boss young, nubile office girls around who wouldn’t give them the time of day.
The anglosphere in this respect is such a broken society, the Corporate state has become the new “family unit” for many, primarily corporate women. Naturally, this is not ideal for China nor for any society which wants to survive into the next century.
This girl for instance became viral due to the toxic nature of such a RTO corporate lifestyle
where are the same girls and boys in her position supposed to find the time, mental bandwidth and energy to create and nurture families? this state of affairs is akin to a death cult.
