Rewards

In recent years, authorities in Henan's Anyang County have created preferential measures to reward families that have followed population control policies, according to Zhao Zigang, an Anyang County family planning official.

According to Zhao, households with a single child or two female children in Anyang are eligible to receive cash grants, with their children entitled to receive free insurance and education. "People benefit directly from having fewer children. This is the best way to describe the family planning policies," he said.

Family planning authorities in some areas of Heilongjiang Province provide free services such as premarital counseling, reproductive risk assessments, parental training classes for parents-to-be and early education for children under three years of age. Coverage for the free services will be extended to the entire province before 2015, said Jia Yumei, a family planning official in Heilongjiang.

China has seen frequent changes in its family planning slogans, concurrent with the adjustments made to its population control policies over the years.

In 2007, the National Population and Family Planning Commission recommended 190 slogans selected through a national campaign. The slogans included warmer-sounding sentiments such as "the Mother Earth is too tired to sustain more children" and "both boys and girls are in their parents' hearts."

The slogans are now distributed to rural families through brochures that are sent out to households, and are no longer painted on the sides of buildings, Jia said.

The commission's notice said it hopes to fully implement "softened and standardized" slogans in both rural and urban areas by 2012.

Family planning policies used to restrict urban couples to one child, while ethnic minority families were permitted to have more children. However, these policies have loosened over the years. In many parts of the country, couples made up of people from one-child families are permitted to have two children.

In rural areas, couples are permitted to have a second child if their first child is female, in accordance with a Chinese tradition that states that males are responsible for ensuring that their families' bloodlines are preserved.

The authors are writers at Xinhua news agency.