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New policy: Couples with fewer children get awards
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-08-03 14:14
In implementing its family planning policy, China is trying to shift from
punishing those who give more births than what the state allows, a practice of
more than 30 years, to encouraging those who have fewer children, according to
China Youth Daily reports.
Beginning from this year, rural families who have only one child or two girls
will receive award and support from government, reported Tuesday's People's
Daily.
Zhao Shuqi, a 67-year-old villager from northeast China's Qiqihar City, and
his wife Huang Yuewen were among first beneficiaries of the policy shift, when
they received on August 1 a certificate of honor and a bankbook from Xu Jialu,
vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress
(NPC). Thirty years ago, the couple responded to the state call of family
planning by having only one girl.
Qiqihar is the only pilot city of the new policy in northeast China's
Heilongjiang Province. After strict examination, a total of 5,084 farmers in the
city were found qualified for the governmental award and support, which come in
the form of an annual subsidy no less than 600 yuan (US$73) for each of them as
long as they live. The encouragement is aimed at helping to block the vicious
circle of "the poorer, the more births; the more births, the poorer" in rural
areas, local officials in charge of population control said.
The pilot work will be launched this year in five provinces and municipality
in west China (Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu, Qinghai and Chongqing), nine cities in
nine central provinces (Hebei, Shanxi, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Jiangxi, Anhui,
Henan, Hunan, and Hubei) as well as in Zunyi City, Guizhou Province. Work has
been started earlier in some provinces where farmers have received award money.
The work will be spread to the whole nation after experience is gained from
trial areas.
Encouragement to having fewer children is an important measure by the Chinese
government to guide farmers to exercise family planning consciously and keep
birth rate low, said Pan Guiyu, vice director of the State Family Planning
Commission, adding that it is also a long-term and stable policy to
fundamentally solve the problem of rural population growth and to promote
coordinated development between population and social, economic progress, as
well as a big breakthrough in the state's establishing of a mechanism of guiding
interests in family planning and social security system.
The policy stipulates that those who receive the award fund must meet all the
following conditions--the receiver and his spouse both have rural residency;
they didn't break family planning regulations and policies during 1973 and 2001;
they currently have one child or two girls, or currently they have no child
because their child died; both of them are 60 or older.
The shift from punishing over births to encouraging fewer births marks more
respect to human rights in China's population control, demographer Liu Junzhe
commented.
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