by
Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 7, 2006
Beijing,
China
(LifeNews.com) -- An official in the Chinese government delivered
news on Friday that's a concern to pro-life and human rights activists
across the globe: China will not abandon it's coercive one-child population
control policy in the coming years.
Zhang Weiqing, minister of the State Commission of Population and Family Planning, said the one-child policy is a long-term government program to curb China's growing population. He said the population control policy will appear in the nation's 11th Five-Year Plan, covering 2006-2010, and beyond.
The policy has been attacked by pro-life and human rights groups because of the numerous abuses that have developed under it. Women have been subjected to forced abortions and husband and wives to forced sterilizations.
Those who violate the policy have been forced to pay fines totaling months or years worth of salary, have been imprisoned, lost their jobs, and have seen family members assaulted or abducted who are hiding couples with more than one child.
According to the China Daily newspaper, Zhang spoke at a national conference on family planning and refuted reports that China plans on relaxing the policy to allow some couples to have two children.
The Shanghai-based Dongfang Morning Post previously reported that Shanghai, a large but economically developed city, would allow couples to have a second child starting in 2016. Not so, said Zhang, who explained that any change in the policy would not come from local officials in Shanghai but must be approved by the Chinese government.
Zhang said local officials have no right to arbitrarily change population control laws, according to the China Daily report.
Zhang says China's population continues to rapidly increase and maintained the coercive one-child rule must stay in place. He said China, which has the world's largest population, will see it rise to 1.37 billion in 2010 and 1.5 billion by 2033.
The Chinese government has taken up some reforms. In rural areas, couples may have two children to carry on the work of family farms and boys are traditionally preferred. Familles whose first child is a girl and decide to have just one child are rewarded.
Still,
the one-child policy and its abuses have prompted thousands of Chinese
to flee and seek political asylum in other countries, including the
United States. The policy has also created a lack of females that has
resulted in alarmingly high rates of prostitution and sex trafficking.
