Higher fines for stars breaking China's one-child rule: state media

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2008

BEIJING (AFP) — Beijing plans to make an example of celebrities who flout China's one-child policy by dramatically raising fines to prevent them buying their way past the rule, state media said Monday.

"Celebrities and wealthy people will be more heavily fined for giving birth to more than one child," Xinhua news agency quoted city family planning chief Deng Xingzhou as saying.

The government and its media outlets have recently played up reports of celebrities and other wealthy citizens skirting the policy, which limits urban families to one child.

The rocketing incomes of the wealthy have allowed them to increasingly get past the rule by paying a fine officially set at around 100,000 yuan (13,800 dollars) for Beijing residents, but which is typically much...