China To Augment Fines For Couples Who Violate One-Child Policy According To Income Level

The Chinese government recently ordered local authorities to check incomes and financial statements before issuing fines for couples who violate the national one-child-per-family policy, the South China Morning Post reports (Pinghui, South China Morning Post, 9/15). China's one-child-per-family policy seeks to keep the country's population, now 1.3 billion, at about 1.7 billion by 2050. Methods of enforcing the policy, such as fines and work demotions, vary among Chinese provinces and cities (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 8/27).

According to the Morning Post, the National Population and Family Planning Commission and 10 other ministries and bureaus in a joint statement released on NPFPC's Web site said that fines will be adjusted according to income level. The policy was approved five years ago, but local authorities have not enforced it effectively, the Morning Post reports. The statement said that people who violate the policy will be recorded in the People's Bank of China's credit system, but it did not say how the information would be used, the Morning Post reports.

The statement said influential people and public figures should "set a good example" by following the law. The "relevant authorities must make obeying the family planning regulation a basic requirement of hiring or promoting a cadre," the statement said, adding, "It should be a key factor in deciding whether a person is qualified to be a delegate to the party congress at all levels or as a deputy to the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference." According to the statement, "Any public figure who deliberately violates the policy will be publicly denounced and severely punished according to the law."

According to Reuters, government media recently has released an increasing number of reports about officials, entertainers and business executives having more than one child, and some provinces have scaled up enforcement of the one-child policy (Reuters, 9/15).

Opinion Piece
To enhance China's "long-term economic outlook," the country must recognize that its one-child policy "has been a tragic and historic mistake" and must "abandon it, immediately," Nicholas Eberstadt, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, writes in a related Wall Street Journal opinion piece. According to Eberstadt, the "superficial success" of the policy to reduce the country's fertility rate "comes with immense inadvertent costs and unintended consequences," including China's "incipient aging crisis, its looming family-structure problems and its worrisome gender imbalances."

Some Chinese officials might "worry that the end of the one-child policy might mean the return to the five-child family -- but in reality, modern China is most unlikely to return to preindustrial fertility norms," Eberstadt writes. He concludes, "Trusting China's people to act in their own self-interest ... may very well prove to be the key to whether China ultimately succeeds in abolishing poverty and attaining mass affluence in the decades and generations ahead." According to the Journal, Eberstadt's opinion piece is an excerpt he delivered at a World Economic Forum conference in Dalian, China, earlier this month (Eberstadt, Wall Street Journal, 9/17).

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