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Nation Relaxes 1-Child Mandate

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The Associated Press

Published: May 27, 2008

BEIJING - Chinese officials said Monday that the country's one-child policy exempts families with a child killed, severely injured or disabled in the country's devastating earthquake.

Those families can obtain a certificate to have another child, the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee in the capital of hard-hit Sichuan province said.
Chinese couples who have more than one child are commonly punished by fines. The announcement says that if a child born illegally was killed in the quake, the parents will no longer have to pay fines for that child - but the previously paid fines won't be refunded.

If the couple's legally born child is killed and the couple is left with an illegally born child under 18, that child can be registered as the legal child - an important move that gives the child previously denied rights including nine free years of compulsory education.

China's one-child policy was launched in the late 1970s to control China's exploding population and ensure better education and health care.

The Associated Press

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