1-child policy has exceptions after China quake

By CARA ANNA, Associated Press Writer 30 minutes ago

BEIJING - Chinese officials said Monday that the country's one-child policy exempts families with a child killed, severely injured or disabled in the country's devastating earthquake.
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Those families can obtain a certificate to have another child, the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee in the capital of hard-hit Sichuan province said.
With so many shattered families asking questions, the Chengdu committee is clarifying existing one-child policy guidelines, said a committee official surnamed Wang.
"There are just a lot of cases now, so we need to clarify our policies," said Wang, who declined to elaborate.
The May 12 quake was particularly painful to many Chinese because it killed so many only children.
The earthquake has left more than 65,000 people dead so far, with more than 23,000 missing. Officials have not been able to estimate the number of children killed.

Chinese couples who have more than one child are commonly punished by fines. The announcement says that if a child born illegally was killed in the quake, the parents will no longer have to pay fines for that child — but the previously paid fines won't be refunded.
If the couple's legally born child is killed and the couple is left with an illegally born child under the age of 18, that child can be registered as the legal child — an important move that gives the child previously denied rights including free nine years of compulsory education.

China's one-child policy was launched in the late 1970s to control China's exploding population and ensure better education and health care. The law includes certain exceptions for ethnic groups, rural families and families where both parents are only children.
The government says the policy has prevented an additional 400 million births, but critics say it has also led to forced abortions, sterilizations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio as local authorities pursue sometimes severe birth quotas set by Beijing and families abort girls out of a traditional preference for male heirs.

Though commonly called a one-child policy, the rules offer a welter of exceptions and loopholes, some of them put into practice because of widespread opposition to the limits.
For example, in large parts of rural China, most families are allowed a second-child, especially if the first was a girl. Local officials often have wide discretion on enforcement, a fact that has made the policy susceptible to corruption.
Many Chinese have shown interest in adopting earthquake orphans, and Monday's announcement says there are no limits on the number of earthquake orphans a family can adopt. The adoptions, or even a future birth to a family that adopts an orphan, will not face the limitations of the one-child policy.

Officials estimated last week that the quake left about 4,000 orphans, but they warned they would make every effort to connect children with other family members.

Strange country china..

The feminist pro-death abortion stance is also very strange as it is well known that many abortions are carried out on female babies throughout the world simply because of their gender.

FFFF,

I would speculate that if feminists have a stance on this issue, they do not support abortion as a means of population control, or of gender selection.

Well, difficult as it is to speculate what "feminists" think, I would say abortion on demand on the say-so of the pregnant woman alone speaks for itself.. Whatever reason she gives, is good enough..

Its also impossible to seriously think that abortion is NOT used as one of the primary tools of birth control, as indeed many women do use this method of "birth control"..

From the state's perspective, it is most certainly used as a means of birth control/eugenics etc..

This movie is one of the most amazing pieces of foreign cinema I have ever seen and it's primary theme is about how China's one child policy is absurd in some regions of China.

The familly depicted in it live in a vast ocean of rolling grassland in outer Mongolia that is marked only by two wheel ruts.

That having been said...China has a BIG problem.

One billion rolls off of the tongue easily.....if you were to flash all ten of your fingers once per second it would take you more than a century around the clock to count that high. And China has a couple of those. That is a BIG problem.

Sorry here is the link for the movie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urga_(film)

Thanks for the link to the movie, Maus- it sounds like one I'd really like to see!

A big problem for the west more than themselves though surely?

Average IQ in china being higher than the western countries apparently..

It has been said that the twenty first century belongs to China.

We really need to awaken more of them from the MATRIX.

If you look at world populations, it seems that over half the world lives in that area of the east.. and they are young men in the main..

Maybe it's all for the best.

Let's compare influential Chinese philosophies with European

China
-Confucianism
-Taoism
-Buddhism

Europe
-nazism/fascism
-communism/socialism/feminism
-humanism

The overpopulation of humans is the ONLY environmental problem that really matters. There are already more humans than the planet can support in a sustainable manner. If the population problem is solved, all the other "environmental" solutions are unneeded. If the population problem is not solved, all the other "environmental solutions" will only postpone the inevitable by a few years.

China is the only country with the gonads to address the population problem. Every other country is turning a blind eye and playing politics. China will come out far ahead. The rest of us should learn from the Chinese.

Blessings

Bob