Zhang Alan’s goal was to have a baby before the age of 30. Single and with no plans to get married, she turned to the Internet for help. “Today we live in a world that is very different from before. We have choices,” she said in a video of her completing an art project. Cutting tailed oblong shapes from paper, she explained that as a single woman she is barred from sperm banks in China. She was looking for a donor. “If you are the one, contact me,” she said in front of the finished work, the outline of a person surrounded by bright red sperm-shaped cutouts. Her phone number flashed across the screen.

As thousands of parliamentary delegates, advisers and officials meet in Beijing this week to endorse preapproved legislation, citizens like Zhang are watching for changes to China’s stringent rules that limit family size and access to reproductive technology for those outside state-approved family structures.

China was one of few major economies to grow during the coronavirus pandemic last year, a recovery that some economists say put it on track to surpass the United States as the world’s largest by 2028. Yet, the country faces a shrinking labor force, a skewed sex ratio and one of the world’s fastest-aging populations. Data released by the Ministry of Public Security in February showed a 15 percent drop in registered new births in 2020.

“That’s huge. That would mean China’s birthrate is very close to unprecedented in modern history,” said Yong Cai, a sociology professor focusing on China’s birth policies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“But this is not something you can change using simple policy measures,” Cai said. “This is probably even more challenging than forcing people not to have kids.”