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Chinese Government to Increase Fines for Violating One-Child Policy

Obama Administration reportedly plans to fund Chinese policies through UN population fund

By Kathleen Gilbert

BEIJING, January 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The chief of Beijing's family planning commission has revealed the Chinese government's plans to continue its population control policies as well as crack down on families violating the nation's one-child policy with higher fines.

According to China Daily, Deng Xingzhou indicated Monday that the government would be developing new policies whose goal would be to maintain "macro control over the total population" for a "healthy development of the city in the long term.”

"As the public feels strongly against those who have more children just because they can afford to pay the fines, we are thinking of collecting much higher social maintenance fees from those who go against the policy," Deng said.

Deng also said that the country's notorious population-control program, which includes forced sterilizations and abortions, would remain unmoved "for another 20 years, when the country's population reaches a projected peak of 1.5 billion."

In Beijing, the fine for having too many children is computed based on the average income per capita, and is usually about three to eight times that figure.

Government forces in the Guangdong and Hubei provinces have been the most severe in punishing families with too many children. In 2007, a Hubei entrepreneur was fined 760,000 yuan (about $111,000) for having a second child.  According to figures cited in the China Daily article, Beijing's per capita income last year was 24,725 yuan ($3,600) for city residents, and less than half that figure for citizens outside the city. 

While the United States has in the past opposed China's "family planning" policy, the relationship is expected to change radically with the upcoming Obama administration.

President-elect Obama has criticized the U.S. government's refusal to promote population-control methods such as sterilization, contraception, and abortion worldwide in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Among other projects, UNFPA helped China formulate and set up its population control policies and procedures.  Independent reports have concluded that UNFPA is also involved in China's coercive birth control tactics, although this is denied by UNFPA. (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2001/oct/011005c.html)  Because China's policies are known to regularly implement coercive tactics in defiance of basic human rights standards, the Bush administration prohibited U.S. funding of the UN establishment.  (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/printerfriendlynew.html?articleid=041216a). 

However, UN supporters in Congress have expressed confidence that Obama will be quick to revive U.S. funding to the UNFPA.

Congressman Chris Smith (R-Hamilton), a leading voice among U.S. politicians decrying China's egregious human rights violations, has frequently denounced UNFPA and warned against condoning its cooperation with China's forced abortions and sterilizations.

When U.S. funding to UNFPA was cut in 2004, Smith (R-Hamilton), commented on the decision stating, "The UNFPA continues to be guilty of shamelessly supporting and whitewashing terrible crimes against humanity, and the United States will have no part in subsidizing them.

"It is long past time for the UNFPA to sever its ties with China's one-child-per-couple family planning program that relies on forced abortion, involuntary sterilization and heavy economic penalties on women to achieve its results," he said.

Smith called on other countries to "look at the evidence and hold the UNFPA and the Chinese population control program accountable at The Hague for crimes against humanity.

"Tens of millions of children have been slaughtered - their mothers robbed of their children by the State. The UNFPA has aggressively defended this barbaric policy that makes brothers and sisters illegal, and makes women the pawns of the population control cadres."

See related LifeSiteNews.com article:

Obama Expected to Join Forces with UN in Global Pro-Abortion Agenda
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08110702.html

UNFPA Supports Coercive Family Planning-Including Forced Abortion-in China
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2001/oct/011005c.html

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