Birth Control Measures Prompt Riots in China

[Breeze54]

Birth Control Measures Prompt Riots in China

By JOSEPH KAHN - Published: May 21, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/world/asia/21cnd-china.html?hp

BEIJING, May 21 —

An intensive campaign to enforce strict population-control measures prompted violent clashes between the police and local residents in southwestern China in recent days, witnesses said, describing the latest incident of rural unrest that has alarmed senior officials in Beijing.

Villagers and visitors to several counties of Guangxi autonomous region in southwestern China said rioters smashed and burned government offices, overturned official vehicles, and clashed with the riot police in a series of confrontations over the past four days.

They gave varying accounts of injuries and deaths, with some asserting that as many as five people were killed, including three officials responsible for population-control work. A local government official in one of the counties affected confirmed the rioting in an interview by telephone but denied reports of deaths or serious injuries.

The violence appeared to stem from a two-month-long crackdown in Guangxi to punish people who violated the country’s birth control policy. The policy limits the number of children families can have legally.

Corruption, land grabs, pollution, unpaid wages and a widening wealth gap have fueled tens of thousands of incidents of unrest in recent years, many of them occurring in rural areas that have been left behind in China’s long economic boom.

The central government, expressing concern that unrest could undermine one-party rule, has alleviated the tax burden on peasants and sought to curtail confiscations of farmland for development. But China’s hinterland remains volatile compared with the relative prosperity and stability of its largest cities.

To limit the growth of its population of 1.3 billion, many parts of China rely more on financial penalties and incentives than on coercive measures, including forced abortions and sterilizations, that were common in the 1980s, when the so-called one-child policy was first strictly enforced.

But local officials who fail to meet annual population control targets can still come under heavy bureaucratic pressure to reduce births in their area of responsibility or face demotion or removal from office.

According to villagers and witness accounts posted on the Internet, officials in several parts of Guangxi mobilized their largest effort in years to roll back population growth by instituting mandatory health checks for women and forcing pregnant women who did not have approval to give birth to abort fetuses.

More.........

Gee and just think?? WalMart has a lot of factories there!!!!!

I'm soooo proud. :sarcasm:

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Hey, this is what awaits us all.

Unchecked population growth will give us these byproducts: Corruption, land grabs, pollution, unpaid wages and a widening wealth gap..

[The2ndWheel]

2. And the way we've built society only reinforces growth in every area

Every aspect of life has to grow, or else the whole system crashes. That includes population. Yet if it continues to grow, it becomes more likely that it collapses. So, either way...

[Warren DeMontague]

3. Er, interestingly enough, folks in advanced nations seem to limit their population ON THEIR OWN

when they're relatively free from excessive amounts of religious brainwashing and religion-inspired laws limiting birth control options.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. I understand Spain has zero population.

But I also hear their economy is no great thing. They are, however, a very educated people.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. We've got the exact opposite issue here, where the GOP wants to outlaw the pill and put people

in jail for non-procreative sex acts.