China Fines for One-Child Violations Will Increase Despite Slogan Changes
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 6, 2007
Beijing, China (LifeNews.com) — Although family planning officials in China are changing the slogans in their one-child campaign, the fines offenders must pay are going up. Most of the media coverage has centered on how Chinese officials are trying a new public relations ploy to soft-sell its policy preventing families from having more than one child.
As LifeNews.com reported, the slogan changes will affect the content of billboards and other advertising encouraging the Chinese people to support the controversial policy.
It has come under fire for years because of forced abortions and sterilizations that have been a part of it.
Heavy fines have also been customary and the untold story along with the slogan changes is that Chinese officials will fine the Chinese people for violations to such a heavy price that they may not be able to afford it.
Hunan provincial People’s Congress is discussing new local family planning regulations that would fine couples who violate the one-child rule to the amount equal to eight times the offenders’ incomes for the previous year.
That could produce a strong response from the citizens there as inordinate family planning fines caused violent protests in Bobai county in the southwestern portion of the Asian nation.
Last month, Chinese courts there sentenced two men to prison who were involved in a protest against forced abortions that involved thousands of people.
The protests began after family planning authorities began forcibly aborting women for violations of the nation’s one-child population policy in April. At least 61 women were made to have abortions as late as seven and nine months into pregnancy.
Women were forced to have abortions because they were unmarried, while other women were married and pregnant with their second child.
Because of the alleged violations of the family planning policy, officials increased fines for offenders and began seizing or destroying the property of people who couldn’t pay the fines.
Some of the citizens of the area say the fines were instituted even on people who had already paid them and that and the forced abortions caused thousands of citizens to riot and destroy government buildings and property.
Police eventually arrested 28 people in association with the riots, according to official Chinese media sources.
Similar high fine initiatives have been adopted in Henan and Zhejiang provinces where the incidence of female infanticides is at their highest because of the cultural preference for boys.
