China warns officials on family planning
Thu Mar 29, 12:38 AM ET
BEIJING - Communist Party officials in China's most populous province have been told they will not be promoted if they have more children than the law allows, state media said.
China's family planning policy — implemented in the late 1970s — limits urban couples to one child and rural families to two to control the population and conserve natural resources.
In Henan in central China, the provincial Communist Party boss warned party officials they would be banned from serving as department leaders or earning promotions if they had more children than they were allowed, the Xinhua News Agency reported late Wednesday.
"Any mistake in population work would have an irreversible impact on the rise of central China. We must make a low birth rate the top priority in our population and family planning work," Xu Guangchun was quoted as saying.
Henan, which has more people than Germany, has vowed to keep its population to 101 million by 2010 and 107 million by 2020, Xinhua said.
Population control laws vary from province to province in China, with some allowing couples who are both single children themselves to have a second child, but Xinhua said Henan does not.
China has 1.3 billion people — 20 percent of the world's population. The government has pledged to keep the population under 1.36 billion by 2010 and under 1.45 billion by 2020.