In the past, when China enforced its family planning policy, parents who had children who were born illegally were often fined. A document that recently circulated on the Internet revealed a policy in which a local government office has taken those “illegal” children away for “rearrangement.” The document, dated July 1 and bearing the seal of the Health Bureau of Quanzhou County in Guangxi province, is an official response to a petition letter filed by a resident who reported a child abduction case.
The Health Bureau of Quanzhou replied that, according to the family planning policy enforced in the 1990s, the Quanzhou county government made the decision to “select” a child for “rearrangement” if the child was born in violation of the laws or regulations and policies on family planning. It ”was made at the request of the higher authorities, including the Guilin city government and the Guangxi provincial government.”
The document stated that the petitioner’s seventh illegally born child was “carried away by the county for social “rearrangement,” and there was no “child trafficking.” No record was kept of the whereabouts of the child.
A lawyer in Beijing said that if the incident involved a joint effort between law enforcement officers and human traffickers, it could be a crime of trafficking of women and children, which carries a maximum sentence of death.
In the past, similar cases have been reported in China. In 2014, China Youth Daily and in 2011Caixin Magazine exposed the forced removal of illegally born babies in Dazhou of Sichuan and Shaoyang of Hunan respectively.
To control population growth, China has had a family planning policy since the 1970s, which for a long time allowed only one child to be born to an average family. However, in recent years, as the birth rate has declined, the country has relaxed the policy several times. In 2021, It shifted toward encouraging people to have three children.
Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), July 5, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202207050238.aspx