The Inscrutable Ideology of the New China

Can't see it, personally. The government does not understand life from the perspective of a young adult. Look at their incentives.

The amount that a Chinese family has to invest in tutoring for the zero-sum gaokao[1], just so that their child keeps up with the pack; the hukou system that means among other problems that access to child healthcare or schools where the parents live and work is expensive; the lack of a pension system requiring young adults to support their parents (two each) as well as save for their own retirement; house ownership unaffordability.

Fix those, and people might relax enough to have children. But maybe not - there are plenty of other things to do these days, and one-child families are the cultural norm now.

Eliminating 996 just means two jobs instead of one; and capping rent and increasing wages increases saving for old age, and possibly spending on material goods and services a little because the fundamentals and incentives have not changed.

1. Yes, I know that large-scale for-profit tutoring has been banned. That just drives it underground, because the fundamentals (the gaokao) and incentives have not changed.