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China: No Plans to Relax One-Child Rule

By Gudrun Schultz

BEIJING, China, January 9, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – China will continue to enforce the rule restricting families to only one child, a senior official said on Friday in the Chinese capital of Beijing.

Zhang Weiqing, minister of the State Commission of Population and Family Planning, said the one-child rule would be strictly enforced in the nation’s 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10). Zhang said State policy intends to maintain and stabilize the current low-level birth rate on a long-term basis. (People’s Daily)

At a national conference on family planning, he refuted recent rumors suggesting that China would loosen the present policy and allow all couples to have a second child.

The Shanghai-based Dongfang Morning Post had earlier reported on rumors that families in the city would be allowed to have a second child by 2016.

The State Council, the central government, Zhang said, must carry out any adjustment of the birth policy and local governments had no rights to make changes.

Mainland China currently has nearly 1.3 billion people. The aim of the family planning initiative is to control the number to within 1.37 billion before the end of 2010, Zhang said.

Under the present rate of birth, China’s population, which is the largest in the world, is expected to reach 1.37 billion by 2010, 1.46 billion by 2020 and 1.5 billion by 2033.

China’s dark history of forcible abortion and sterilization, atrocities committed in the ongoing effort to maintain a low birth rate, continues unchecked. Amnesty International’s 2005 report on China stated:

“Severe violations against women and girls continued to be reported as a result of the enforcement of the family planning policy, including forced abortions and sterilizations. In July the authorities publicly reinforced a ban on the selective abortion of female foetuses in an attempt to reverse a growing gap in the boy-girl birth ratio.”

In October 2005 LifeSiteNews reported on the brutal crackdown in the eastern province of Shandong, where more than 120,000 people were forced to undergo abortions and sterilizations.

For LifeSiteNews coverage, see:
Forced Abortion Continues in China at Alarming Rate says Latest Report
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/oct/05102602.html

To view Amnesty International’s report on China, see:
http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/chn-summary-eng

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