The capital is urging parents who have broken family planning policies to register their extra births before Nov 1.

According to Xi Kaili, a spokesperson for the Beijing Municipal Commission of Population and Family Planning, families who register their extra births now will face only minimal fines while those who attempt to hide the births of "illegal" newborns will have to raise those children without the benefit of citizenship.

China's family planning policies encourage most urban residents to limit their family size to one child.

While saying penalties for parents who come forward to register their extra children will be minimal, the spokesperson would not specify the size of those fines.

However, Xi said the penalties will be smaller than the typical fines of the recent past, which were often eight or nine times the average annual income. According to Beijing Statistics Bureau, the average annual wage in the capital last year was 30,000 yuan. The minimum penalty for breaking the policy is 90,000 yuan.

"The circumstances have been rare for the authorities to fine families by the minimum penalty, except in cases of families in extreme difficulty," said Xi.

Last year, around 100,000 babies were born in the capital but officials have said the real number may be much higher because some parents have had more than their single child permitted under the rules but have not reported the additional births to the authorities in order to avoid penalties.

Those unregistered children then will typically not have citizenship.

Beijing is understood to be encouraging the registration of the unregistered children as part of the nationwide census that is held every 10 years and is being carried out this year.

Hou Donghai, a Beijing resident from the suburban Yanqing county, who was born as the second child in her family in 1986, said there seem to be fewer people these days breaking the rules.

Her family was fined 500 yuan back in 1986 for violating the policy. The penalty since then has become much more severe.

"I have not heard of many newborns that break the family planning policy recently," said the 24-year-old.

An official with the Beijing Bureau of Statistics, who declined to be named, said most of the births that break the rules of the policy are attributable to the largely unsupervised migrant population and the super-rich, who can afford the penalties.

"I haven't encountered an excess child in my neighborhood for years," said the official.

Yang Wanli contributed to the story.

China Daily

(China Daily 08/30/2010)