China province to raise fines on parents breaking 1-child rule+

BEIJING-Central China's Hunan Province will impose massive fines on wealthy parents who break the nation's one-child policy, state media reported Wednesday.The official Xinhua News Agency said the much heavier penalties are to be introduced after the provincial family planning commission found that nearly 2,000 government officials and what it described as "celebrities" had contravened China's family planning laws in recent years.
A national government survey carried out last year also said the majority of wealthy Chinese now have two children,with 10 percent having three.An unnamed official with Hunan's family planning commission told Xinhua, "The current penalties are too low for well-off people and we are raising them to ensure social justice."Couples in Hunan who have a second child illegally are now fined double their combined annual income. After the new laws are introduced they could be fined up to seven times their yearly salaries.Parents found to have illegitimate second children could be fined up to 10 times their annual earnings,the report said.Hunan Gov. Zhou Qiang in April ordered local officials to "expose the celebrities and high-income people who violate the family planning policy and have more than one child,"said Xinhua.The southern province of Guangdong introduced similar tougher fines five years ago to deter high-income families from breaking family planning laws.
The vast majority of Chinese couples can only have one child, although the restrictions are sometimes relaxed in rural areas and among China's ethnic minority groups.Riots broke out in parts of the southern region of Guangxi earlier this year after the authorities tried to collect fines, or seize the property,of families deemed to have broken family planning regulations.The so-called one-child policy was introduced in 1979 in an attempt to control China's rapidly growing population.The head of the National Population and Family Commission,Zhang Weiqing, said earlier this year it was essential that the policy continue to be strictly enforced if the government is to succeed in bringing the population under control.
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