Birth control crackdown sparks riots in China

By Edward Cody

updated 9:40 a.m. ET May 23, 2007

BOBAI, China, - Word came down from the central government in Beijing that it was time to strengthen enforcement of China's one-child policy.

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In response, people here said, birth control bureaucrats showed up in a half-dozen towns with sledgehammers and threatened to knock holes in the homes of people who had failed to pay fines imposed for having more than one child. Other family planning officials, backed by hired toughs, pushed their way into businesses owned by parents of more than one child and confiscated everything from sacks of rice to color televisions, they said.

The brutal fine-collection drive was launched last week around Bobai, 110 miles southeast of Nanning in southern China's Guangxi province. It constituted the latest example of abusive local enforcement of a policy that China's leadership says is vital to maintaining swift economic growth and spreading its benefits more evenly among a population already at 1.3 billion people.

Local officials eager to meet population quotas have frequently been accused of forcing women to submit to abortions or sterilizations to keep the birthrate down. But 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.

"The people who didn't have money, they threatened to knock their houses down, or punch holes in the roof," a resident said.

Resistance to highhanded rulers
But the farmers of Bobai and nearby towns have been known since the Qing Dynasty for resistance to highhanded rulers. True to their legacy, they rose up against the collection teams, whom they decried as bandits. Backed by their sons, thousands of peasants and townspeople encircled government and birth control centers across surrounding Bobai County, residents here said, stoning riot police brought in to quell the unrest and, in some places, trashing local offices.

"There was trouble in all the villages around here," said a truck driver who, like most of those interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution by local officials.

Even near the main county office building, a witness said, a white banner was unfurled calling for revenge against Su Jianzhong, the Bobai County Communist Party secretary. "Crack down on the head of the bandits, Su Jianzhong," it advertised for all to see, until authorities pulled it down.

The townspeople were all the more unwilling to accept authorities' demands for payment because, as frequently is the case in China, they expressed belief that local officials were generally corrupt and that the money for fines would go to line their pockets rather than into government coffers.

The disorder, which rolled from village to village between Thursday and Saturday, caused a number of injuries to police and protesters, according to witnesses. Townspeople and villagers, relaying unverified reports, said an unknown number of people were killed. Several people reported seeing police carrying pistols and rifles, but there were no firsthand reports of gunfire.

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