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May 23, 2007

One-Child Policy Crackdown

Rioting erupts when residents are forced to pay fines for having extra kids.

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.

Comments

Could someone please let me know if the Weblog feature is coming back? I really liked the way it provided links and sorted all the news on religion and politics. Is it gone forever?