Enforcing the one-child policy

China's one-child policy is bringing its own social consequences: an ageing population and a gender imbalance of 120.56 boys to girls against a world average of 103-107. One of the causes is referred to here as "female feticide" and the result is 32 million more boys than girls. In Shanghai the government has relaxed the law to allow parents who are both an only child to have two children. I had gathered that the stricter penalties imposed on erring couples had been relaxed - but not in Puning City, Guangdong Province it seems. Last week 1,377 people were captured and confined in dozens of government offices "until their sons and daughters who have violated the nation's family planning policy agreed to accept sterilization." ( Shanghai Daily , 16 April, 2010). Puning have not done enough to uphold the policy we are told and so the government has ordered a 20-day campaign to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which has a population of 2.24 million.

Apparently in some places they were so cramped they had no room to stand or squat: filthy air, cold and damp. Elderly parents were held until their wayward children returned home for sterilization in order to free their parents. Many of their children were working in different parts of China as "migrant workers" and could have taken a day or more to return. Most came back "immediately".

Unbelievable - but true - I read it in the Shanghai Daily.