Posted on 08/26/2002 6:25:16 PM PDT by Salvation
2002-08-22
BEIJING (AP) — In a loosening of China's one-child policy, a rural province will let divorcees, coal miners and some other couples have more than one child beginning next month.
Anhui province acted under a new national provision giving local governments more power to tailor birth control policies to local needs. The change comes as many Chinese areas are steering away from coercive birth control rules that the United States and other critics say include forced abortions and sterilizations.
Anhui now will permit 13 categories of couples to have a second child. Among them are divorcees in cases where both husband and wife have only one child from previous marriages and couples in which both husband and wife were only children.
The law also permits coal miners, a notoriously risky occupation in China, to have a second child.
Farm couples will be permitted an additional child if the husband lives with his wife's family and the wife has no brothers, apparently to meet concerns about supporting in-laws. As is already the case in much of China, farm couples also can have a second child if their first is a girl.
China imposed a strict "one-child policy" in the late 1970s as a way to brake its population, which now is about 1.26 billion. The government says the policy resulted in 300 million fewer births over the last decade.
However, the policy wasn't formally put into law until last December. And the regulation passed by the National People's Congress, China's parliament, allows provinces to make their own laws to fit special circumstances.
An official at the Anhui provincial People's Congress, who gave just her surname, Ji, said Anhui was the first to pass a local birth control law. She said Anhui's measure takes effect Sept. 1, the same date the national law goes into force.
Siri Tellier, the Beijing representative of the U.N. World Population Fund, said the law appeared to confirm a trend toward more liberal birth control policies in China. Authorities may feel they can give up some coercive practices because many Chinese on their own now wish to have fewer children, for financial or lifestyle reasons, she said.
But she added it remains hard to gauge the overall national trend.
In some areas, many couples already can dodge the one-child policy and have two or more children by paying a fine to authorities. But in other areas, the limit is tightly enforced.
Besides reported forced abortions and sterilizations, couples that have extra children can be punished with high fines, loss of residency rights and even by having their homes bulldozed. Additional children are often barred from attending state schools.
Such practices were cited recently by the United States as the reason for withholding a $34 million contribution to the U.N. Population Fund.
Or is it another case of "Follow the money"?
Sick. =(
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.