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In an attempt to keep in line with the “one child per couple rule,” China plans to sterilize those whom have violated this birth control policy. Doctors in China have been ordered to sterilize about 10,000 of these violators, by force if necessary. About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilization.
Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist. Thousands of others have refused to submit and officials are continuing to detain relatives, including elderly parents, to force them to submit to surgery. Those in detention are required to listen to lectures on the rules limiting the size of families.
The campaign launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilizations in Puning, which has a population of 2.24 million. One official said that an investigation would be launched to establish whether authorities in Puning had exceeded their remit. A state-level regulation stipulates that couples who violate the family planning policy must not be punished without proper authorization and family members may not be penalized to put pressure on couples.
China is the world’s most populous country with about 1.3 billion people and by 2025, the population is expected to exceed 1.4 billion. The single-child policy, referred to by the Chinese Government as the family planning policy, was introduced in 1978 to ensure that China could feed all of its people. Despite the policy, it is common to find couples in the countryside, where 80 per cent of the population live, with a large number of children
