Birth Control Crackdown Sparks Riots In Rural China Ⅰ

Article title: Birth Control Crackdown Sparks Riots In Rural China
Source: The Washington Post
Published: Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Downloaded from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/22/AR2007052201496.html on Thursday, May 24 at 0.42am

Birth control bureaucrats threatened to knock holes in the homes of people who had failed to pay fines imposed for having more than one child and confiscated everything from sacks of rice to color televisions. The brutal fine-collection drive was launched last week around Bobai, China. China’s leadership says that is vital to maintaining swift economic growth and spreading its benefits more evenly among a population already at 1.3 billion people. The problem in the Bobai area was that lax enforcement of the policy over the years led to a high number of families with several children, and suddenly the local family planning bureau wanted to collect its fines or else. But the farmers of Bobai have been known rulers were highhanded. They stoned riot police brought in to quell the unrest and trashed local offices. The townspeople were unwilling to accept authorities’ demands for payment because they believed that local officials were generally corrupt and that the money for fines would go to their pockets rather than into government coffers. The disorder caused a number of injuries to police and protesters. Authorities imposed an overnight curfew. Similar outbreaks of violence were reported in the other towns where offices were ransacked and police cars were burned.