By Xinhua
Beijing : The administration of China’s capital city said it would impose hefty fines on celebrities who violate the one-child rule, a senior family planning official said Sunday.
“Celebrities and wealthy people would be more heavily fined for giving birth to more than one child. The commission is still deliberating on the amount of the penalty,” Deng Xingzhou, head of the Beijing Municipal Commission on Family Planning, told a meeting of the municipal political advisory body.
In recent years, many celebrities such as film stars and sports stars have faced media criticism over the size of their families.
Media reports said that Hao Haidong, a football star, was fined 50,000 yuan (about $6,850) for having a second child. His annual salary is 5 million yuan, one of the highest for a football player in China.
Couples can potentially be fined up to 10 times the local per capita income, although actual fines are often lower. In Beijing, for example, the per capita annual income for urban residents was 21,989 yuan ($3,040) in 2007. Sources said the fine in Beijing now is around 100,000 yuan ($13,800).
Fines collected by district-level family planning commissions vary from person to person and place to place. Media reports often speculate on the penalties imposed on celebrities.
“Celebrities and well-off people should not have any privileges for having more children,” Zhang Weiqing, director of the State Commission of Family Planning, told a meeting in Guangdong Province last year.
He said he believed that the number of celebrities who have more than one child was not very large, but because of their fame, their behaviour has a negative social influence.
The Beijing commission also plans to put family planning violation records into the celebrities’ personal files in the national credit system. This could affect their ability to borrow.
Li Wanchen, director of the Hunan Provincial Commission of Family Planning, said that the punishment on celebrities and the affluent who break “one-child” policy needs joint efforts from the departments of resident registration, taxation, public security and banks.
Many celebrities have either changed their nationalities or given their children a foreign nationality in order to have more children.
China’s one-child policy has been in effect for more than three decades. The policy, which limits most couples to one child in urban areas and two in rural regions, has prevented an estimated 400 million births.