Chinese government officials and Communist Party members will be barred from promotion if they have more children than the law allows, according to a circular issued on Friday.

 

"Obeying the family planning policy will be taken as a fundamental standard for the promotion of officials, the election of deputies to Party congresses, people's congresses, and political advisors at all levels," read the circular, co-issued by the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and 10 other departments.

 

It would also be a criterion for the selection of model workers and other exemplary individuals, according to the circular.

 

"A supervision mechanism will be established to check the family status of officials and Party members," read the circular.

 

Local personnel departments are required to record the names of Party members and officials who break the law or are allowed to have a second child in accordance with the policy.

 

A reward system would be established to encourage the public to report law-breaking Party members and officials, the circular said.

 

Party members who broke the rules would receive disciplinary punishment as well as fines in accordance with relevant regulations.

 

China's family planning policy, which encourages late marriage and late child-bearing, limits most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two, has been credited with preventing more than 400 million births since it was introduced in the late 1970s to curb population growth.

 

The policy was upgraded to the Population and Family Planning Law in December 2001 at the 25th session of the Ninth National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, and the law came into effect in September 2002.

 

However, increasing reports of officials, tycoons and celebrities having more than one child have been causing public discontent.

 

"The fact that some local governments are reluctant to give penalties or they show leniency to the policy-violating officials and tycoons is one of the main reasons for the trend," said a spokesman of the provincial family planning commission in central China's Hunan Province.

 

This July, the commission exposed 1,968 officials who had breached the nation's one-child policy from 2000 to 2005. Also exposed were 21 national and local lawmakers, 24 political advisors, 112 entrepreneurs and six senior intellectuals.

 

The measure of "naming and shaming the celebrities and high-income people who violate the family planning policy" was also adopted by east China's Zhejiang Province and central China's Henan Province, the nation's most populous region.

 

Meanwhile, Henan and Zhejiang have greatly raised the fines for violations of the policy. In some cases, the fine could be more than 1 million yuan (US$130,000).

 

(Xinhua News Agency September 15, 2007