MCLC: population control as revenue source

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: population control as revenue source
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (9/26/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/27/world/asia/chinese-provinces-collected-bi
llions-in-family-planning-fines-lawyer-says.html

Population Control Is Called Big Revenue Source in China
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIJING — Nineteen province-level governments in China collected a total
of $2.7 billion in fines last year from parents who had violated family
planning laws, which usually limit couples to one child, a lawyer who had
requested the data said Thursday.

The lawyer, Wu Youshui of Zhejiang Province, sent letters in July to 31
provincial governments asking officials to disclose how much they had
collected in 2012 in family planning fines, referred to as “social support
fees.” He said he suspected that the fines were a substantial source of
revenue for governments in poor parts of China.

“We want to shed light on how the current family planning policy works,”
Mr. Wu said via telephone. “Many are debating reform of the family
planning policy. Learning how it works may help with that debate.”

Mr. Wu’s findings were first published Thursday by Beijing News. Mr. Wu
opposes China’s one-child policy and has written on his microblog he is a
Christian.

Last year, some prominent scholars and policy advisers started a major
effort to push central officials to fundamentally change or repeal a law
that generally punishes families for having more than one child. That push
comes as economists point out that China’s economic growth rate is likely
to slow because its pool of cheap, young workers is dwindling as the
population ages.

The 2010 national census showed that the average birthrate for a Chinese
household was 1.181; it was lower in cities and higher in rural areas.
Some scholars say that number is extraordinarily low, and the real figure
is probably a bit higher.

The family planning regulations are prone to abuse because local officials
are often evaluated by their superiors based on how well they keep down
the populations of their areas. There have been well-known cases of forced
abortions or sterilizations across China. Last year, Chinese Internet
users sympathized with the plight of Pan Chunyan, who said she had been
abducted by officials in Daji Township when she was eight months pregnant
with her third child. The officials forced her to have an abortion at a
hospital. In June 2012, another woman, Feng Jianmei, was forced to abort a
7-month-old fetus in Shaanxi Province, in a case that also ignited
national outrage.

Parents in other parts of China have accused local family planning
officials of abducting babies who are considered “extra” children in a
household and selling them to orphanages, sometimes for $3,000 per baby.

The Beijing News report said Mr. Wu, the lawyer, obtained data showing
that Jiangxi Province had collected the most in fines of the 19 provinces
that replied to him; it amassed $554 million in 2012. Sichuan was second
with $400 million, and Fujian was third with $340 million. The provinces
that collected the least were Qinghai, with $572,000, and Ningxia, with
about $2 million. Both have low populations compared with most other
provinces, and they are also home to many rural residents and ethnic
minorities, who have more leeway in the number of children they can have
without incurring fines.

The 12 province-level governments that did not provide data told Mr. Wu
that the fines were collected at the county level and used there, so the
provincial governments had no information.

On Sept. 18, the National Audit Office published a report on the
collection and spending of the “social support fee” after it reviewed nine
provinces. The office looked at five counties in each of those provinces.
It found that “extra” children were not properly counted, that there were
no uniform standards for collecting the fees and that management of the
fees was poor.

Mr. Wu said that he suspected that the fines had been “managed in a
chaotic way,” and that it appeared that county-level officials overseeing
the punishments had been unsupervised.

He said the fee should be abolished altogether, and “it should be the
family’s decision how many children to have.”

Mia Li contributed research.