China plans to issue new policies aimed at punishing celebrities and rich people, who are often having more children than the state family planning policy allows, according to a senior government official.

The move came as the government received an increasing number of complaints from the public saying celebrities and rich people are able to have more children than ordinary people because they are not afraid of paying fines.

Most of these rich people are private business owners with high income and not affiliated with any government organization, said Mu Weiyong, vice director of the family planning commission in northeast China's Liaoning Province.

"The majority of the 700 cases we investigated since 2000 are wealthy private business owners, while in the decade before 2000, we only had 76 cases related to rich people," said Mu.

According to the state family planning policy, government workers will be punished by the Party and their administration if they have more than one child. But no effective measures have been developed to punish celebrities and the wealthy as most of them are not affiliated with government organizations.

The majority of those public figures and rich people are willing to pay fines, but do not wish to see their reputation impugned, according to Yu Xuejun, director of the department of policy and legislation under the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

Under the new plan, their names will be recorded and they will no longer be allowed to compete in awards such as "honorary citizen" if they have two or more children, Yu added.

"Celebrities and rich people's candidacy for awards should be abolished and government officials should be removed from their posts if they have more than one child," said Mu.

A recent survey conducted in four cities by the National Population and Family Planning Commission showed that the majority of celebrities and rich people with unplanned births have two children, with 10 percent of them having three.

To curb the population explosion, China's family planning policy was enacted in the late 1970s to advocate one child for each family and encourage late marriages and childbearing. It is estimated that the policy has prevented more than 400 million births since its initiation.

(Xinhua News Agency March 2, 2007)