Chinese government officials and Communist Party members will be
barred from promotion if they have more children than the law
allows, according to a circular issued on Friday.
"Obeying the family planning policy will be taken as a
fundamental standard for the promotion of officials, the election
of deputies to Party congresses, people's congresses, and political
advisors at all levels," read the circular, co-issued by the
Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and 10 other
departments.
It would also be a criterion for the selection of model workers
and other exemplary individuals, according to the circular.
"A supervision mechanism will be established to check the family
status of officials and Party members," read the circular.
Local personnel departments are required to record the names of
Party members and officials who break the law or are allowed to
have a second child in accordance with the policy.
A reward system would be established to encourage the public to
report law-breaking Party members and officials, the circular
said.
Party members who broke the rules would receive disciplinary
punishment as well as fines in accordance with relevant
regulations.
China's family planning policy, which encourages late marriage
and late child-bearing, limits most urban couples to one child and
most rural couples to two, has been credited with preventing more
than 400 million births since it was introduced in the late 1970s
to curb population growth.
The policy was upgraded to the Population and Family Planning
Law in December 2001 at the 25th session of the Ninth National People's Congress, the country's top
legislature, and the law came into effect in September 2002.
However, increasing reports of officials, tycoons and
celebrities having more than one child have been causing public
discontent.
"The fact that some local governments are reluctant to give
penalties or they show leniency to the policy-violating officials
and tycoons is one of the main reasons for the trend," said a
spokesman of the provincial family planning commission in central
China's Hunan Province.
This July, the commission exposed 1,968 officials who had
breached the nation's one-child policy from 2000 to 2005. Also
exposed were 21 national and local lawmakers, 24 political
advisors, 112 entrepreneurs and six senior intellectuals.
The measure of "naming and shaming the celebrities and
high-income people who violate the family planning policy" was also
adopted by east China's Zhejiang Province and central China's Henan Province, the nation's most populous
region.
Meanwhile, Henan and Zhejiang have greatly raised the fines for
violations of the policy. In some cases, the fine could be more
than 1 million yuan (US$130,000).
(Xinhua News Agency September 15, 2007