Local officials in Guangxi province are using brutal methods to crack down on those families that did not pay fines for breaking China's one-child policy. The Washington Post reports

birth control bureaucrats showed up in a half-dozen towns with sledgehammers and threatened to knock holes in the homes of people who had failed to pay fines imposed for having more than one child. Other family planning officials, backed by hired toughs, pushed their way into businesses owned by parents of more than one child and confiscated everything from sacks of rice to color televisions.

The residents fought back. "Thousands of peasants and townspeople encircled government and birth control centers across surrounding Bobai County, residents here said, stoning riot police brought in to quell the unrest and, in some places, trashing local offices."

It seems the culture wars in China are taken a bit more literally than here.

Posted by Rob Moll on May 23, 2007 8:51AM