"Rich people and celebrities have more power to contravene the birth control rules," said Mu Guangzong, a professor at Peking University's Institute of Population Research. "Once there's a chance they will find a way to satisfy their individualized needs for having more babies."

The predicament

According to the government population plan, the Chinese mainland's population is expected to be around 1.36 billion by 2010 and 1.45 billion by 2020. If it had not been for family planning policies, China would have an additional 400 million people living in it today.

Despite its success in stunting China's population boom, the government remains worried about future population control work based on the recent rebound in figures and trend for larger families.

According to Zhang, the first half of this century will witness a peak in the country's total population, as well as in its labor force population and aging population. In the coming decades, the average population increase will be around 8 to 10 million people each year.

With this in mind, the Chinese Government is paying special attention to the problem of excessive birth rates among the rich. "This issue, although it does not result in a large population gross, has very bad social influences and should be punished seriously," Zhang said.

Awkward situation

The Population and Family Planning Law of the People's Republic of China allows for two ways to punish families that break rules on excessive birth rates. One is administrative punishment, including job relocation, demotion and salary deduction. The second is the payment of a fine, the sum of which differs from place to place.

The majority of wealthy individuals who break birth rate regulations are not state employed, so an administrative punishment is not an option. Being forced to pay a fine is also ineffective as for wealthy families it is a small sum worth paying.

"The current regulations only target those who belong to working units and can do nothing to the rich and celebrities. What's more, some of them have political status, which makes it harder to control them," said Yuan, the local official of Jiangxi Province.

Economic fines and public criticism are the only ways to deal with the current excessive birth problem, according to Zhang. "We will try other means to let them understand and support the country's family planning policies," he said.

Countermeasures

Although it is a new social phenomenon, the number of wealthy people breaking family planning regulations is far less than that among poor rural communities. However, the former has much more negative impact, according to some observers.

"Once it becomes a privilege for the rich to have more babies, it will lead to the losing of a sense of social fairness and the retroversion of the current birth control concept," the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily said.

Similar comments can be seen everywhere in Internet forums. Comments such as "excessive births among the rich and celebrities hamper social fairness," and "the rich are not afraid of fines and the poor have nothing to be fined, family planning is set to only plan the middle and lower class in society," are common.

"It's getting so costly to raise just one kid, plus the high fine if one wants a second baby is unaffordable to the ordinary working class. But it is just something trivial for rich families," said Liu Shiming, an employee at a private company in Beijing.

The National Population and Family Planning Commission has on a number of occasions said that the payment of fines is intended as a method for controlling birth rates, not an objective in itself, and that being wealthy should not be a guarantee of being allowed to have more children. The Commission is now working on amending laws and regulations and some local population bureaus are also exploring new countermeasures that could even the playing field for rich and poor.

Liaoning Province has suggested that wealthy people who break birth rate regulations should be ineligible for the titles of National People's Congress (NPC) deputy and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) member. These are positions that bring with them certain influence.

Wealthy families tend to live in private housing where it is difficult for local population bureaus to get information about the size of their family. Some local population bureaus have begun to initiate more interaction between themselves, estate management companies, and members of the local community in order to get past this information barrier.

Yang Kuifu, a population expert, believes that rich birth control violators should have their names recorded in a system that will enable other economic penalties besides a regular fine, such as loan limits.

According to Zhai Zhenwu, a professor at the Institute of Demographic Studies at Renmin University of China, the phenomenon of excessive births among the rich indicates that population control regulations need to be modified.

More radical commentators have even suggested that the country should treat birth rate violation as a criminal offense.

Such a move would be an excessive measure, according to Mu Guangzong, a professor at Peking University's Institute of Population Research. "Any countermeasure should stick to the principle of fairness and justice in birth control," he said. "To use criminal law to curb birth rate violations is going to extremes."