CHINA:A Chinese province is planning significantly to increase the fines levied on people who break rules under the one-child policy, part of efforts to more rigorously enforce the family planning rules that usually limit couples to a single baby.
The new regulations rules are aimed in particular at Communist Party officials who flaunt the rules, amid growing discontent about official corruption. "The current penalties are too low for well-off people, and we are raising them to ensure social justice," an official with the Hunan family planning commission said.
The provincial parliament in Hunan is discussing new laws to raise the fines for violators to up to eight times their annual income. Similar moves are under way in the central province of Henan and the eastern province of Zhejiang.
The policy was imposed in 1979 as a way of reining in population growth already running at dangerously high levels in the world's most populous nation.
It is not a popular policy, particularly in the countryside, and there is a feeling there are double standards about the policy, where the rich can afford to buy their way out, while the poor are forced to endure the wrath of the state.
News that almost 2,000 cadres and well-known public figures had broken the rules in Hunan was given wide media coverage this month. Among them was a delegate to the National People's Congress, who kept four mistresses and had four children.
The government reckons that since the policy was introduced, over 400 million births have been prevented. There is now an average birth rate of 1.8 children per couple in China, compared to six children when it was introduced.
Last year, 13 officials in Shaanxi province were punished for allowing a woman to have nine children.
There are calls from the richer southern provinces to abandon the policy, because of a growing labour shortage. The country also faces the threat of a graying population, but the government is sticking to it.