My Experience With Maternity Leave In China

A pregnant woman sitting at a desk. Image source.

I recently got pregnant and had a baby in China, while also working a full-time job. Everything went really well with maternity leave and with the company giving me support during the pregnancy. China's policies about this are very good. 

Here's a summary of how it went for me:

When I started my job

When I started this job, the HR set up my salary so that every month some money is taken out for the Chinese social insurance (社保). This is how the system works for all Chinese employees, and I think international employees are also supposed to, but other companies I've worked at in the past haven't taken money out. The rules are unclear to me.

Anyway, the government uses this social insurance money to pay for maternity leave, disability, unemployment, health care, and retirement. And because I am paying into the system, I am entitled to the maternity leave benefits. So I'm glad about that.

First trimester of pregnancy

So I got the positive pregnancy test, and then a week or so later my manager wanted me to go on a business trip. And I felt fine, no morning sickness, no problems caused by the pregnancy, so I agreed to go.

So I went on the business trip, and it was fine, until the last day I suddenly started feeling nauseous. That turned out to be morning sickness. Then when I got home, the endless parade of throwing up came into full swing. :/

A few days later, I told my manager I was pregnant. He turned out to be very nice and helpful, and helped me cobble together a schedule of sick days, vacation days, and working from home, so I could get through the first trimester. (Company policy says we can only work from home 4 days each month, but my manager and his manager both said it doesn't matter, I can work from home.)

Also, he didn't ask me to go on any business trips throughout the whole rest of the pregnancy. So that was nice.

(And according to Chinese law, it is illegal to fire a pregnant woman.)

Third trimester of pregnancy

HR told me that starting from the 28th week of the pregnancy, I am only required to work 7 hours each day instead of 8. Apparently this is a law in China. So I started only working 7 hours, and really liked that. :)

Starting maternity leave

In China, women get 98 days of maternity leave when they have a baby. If you're in Shanghai, you get an additional 30 days- and other cities will have their own policies of how many additional days you get. If you have a C-section, you get an additional 15 days. (Also you get a certain amount of paid leave for an abortion or miscarriage, but I don't know how much it is.)

I heard that typically, people start their maternity leave maybe 2 weeks before the due date. And if you get a doctor's note, that can count as sick leave, so you're not actually using up your maternity leave days. (But the sick leave is paid at something like 80% of your normal salary- not 100% like regular sick leave.)

HR told me to just submit my plan for maternity leave whenever. I told the HR manager that I want to start 2 weeks before my due date, and what general date I would like to come back, and she made a plan for me for how to arrange vacation days and sick days at the beginning and end of the maternity leave days in order to maximize the total amount of time. (Because the maternity leave is counted as consecutive days which include weekends, but vacation days are just work days, so you can do some playing around with weekends and stuff to get a slightly longer amount of time off.) That was super helpful.

Getting paid during maternity leave

So for some reason I forgot that in China, everything is a pile of bureaucracy and paperwork that's way more complicated than it should be.

Maternity leave is paid at 100% of your salary. (There is some math about what part the company pays and what part the government pays, and if your salary is lower than the average salary then I think you get paid the average salary instead. I'm not really clear about all the details.)

Anyway, to get paid, I had to go down to the social insurance office with a bunch of paperwork, and then they didn't have a clue about how to handle it because I'm not Chinese, and the people working at that office had never done this for an international mom before. So then I had to go to the local HQ social insurance office, and then the managers or whoever had to discuss if it was valid that I had a passport instead of a Chinese ID card, and blah blah blah. Eventually I got the money; they sent it as a bank transfer about 1 or 2 weeks after I submitted the paperwork.

One of the things that was required in order to get the money was my marriage license. Which brings up the question, what about women who aren't married and have a baby? Do they get paid maternity leave, or not? I have heard from some other moms in this situation, talking about how there were additional hoops to jump through, like they had to get some official paper that said they live together with their baby's father. But ... well like what if you don't live with the baby's father? This is really not cool that it works like this.

Coming back to work

Coming back to work was fine. Everyone was happy to see me- they were all like "welcome back!" and "how is your baby?" Oh but then the first day I was only able to work a half day because my baby didn't want to drink his bottle so I had to rush home and feed him. But we solved that problem within a few days, and then things were fine.

Pumping breast milk

According to Chinese law, moms with a child under 1 year old get an extra 1-hour break every day, for pumping milk. (It doesn't matter if you're actually breastfeeding or not. You can use the break for whatever.) At some companies, you can just come to work an hour later, or leave an hour earlier, and at some companies you take more breaks during the day. So basically, from the third trimester of pregnancy until the baby's first birthday, you only have to work 7 hours a day.

At the office where I work, breastfeeding moms use the storage room for pumping. There's a table and two chairs in there, in addition to, like, a ton of boxes full of our company's important documents. I feel like it's not exactly ideal, but whatever, it works fine.

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So everything has gone extremely well for me. I'm really glad my manager and the HR at work have been so flexible and helpful. HR informed me about the fact that I'd only have to work 7 hours/day in the third trimester and helped me make a plan for when to take maternity leave. And my manager has been so nice, always telling me he understands if I need to take extra time off, and how I have to balance work with taking care of my baby. (I told him I totally intend to keep doing my job like a normal employee.) 

This is the law in China. It's extremely supportive towards pregnant women, and I'm happy about that.

But there are always companies trying to get away with not following the law. I heard stories from other pregnant women about how their HR is claiming that the company doesn't need to do this or that, claiming that international workers don't have rights, etc. If you're working in China and you're pregnant, know your rights. For me, everything has gone very well though.