Family planning reforms are a step in the right direction but implementation will be challenging

At the end of last year, the Chinese movie director Zhang Yimou and his wife Chen Ting admitted in a television interview they had breached the family planning regulations by giving birth to three children. The couple said they made a mistake and are willing to correct it by cooperating with the Wuxi Family Planning Committee and paying the social cost of upbringing - she hui fu yang fei - which it is estimated will be a record high of 7 million yuan ($1.15 million, 850,940 euros).

What is the social cost of upbringing and does it have reasonable grounds to exist? According to the official explanation, since China is a country with a huge population but limited natural resources, an excessive increase in the population would impose a burden on society as a whole that would eventually be too heavy to bear, impeding China's development into a prosperous and industrialized country. Accordingly, since children consume social resources and public services, parents should pay to offset the costs caused by any children not allowed under the family planning policy.

However, there are several issues arising from collecting payments intended to cover the social cost of upbringing, and it is time to take a closer look at the system.

The major criteria for calculating the social cost of upbringing is the per capita income in certain districts, the income of the parents, and the circumstances involved in violating the policy.

As a result, "the same life but different price" charges have emerged, as the same violation of the family planning policy could mean a different social cost of upbringing charge depend on the region. Take Beijing, where the social cost of upbringing for couples violating the policy is three to 10 times the average disposable income of urban residents or the net income of rural residents based on statistics from the Beijing Municipal Statistics Bureau. This is known as the cardinal number. However, different districts in the capital enjoy wide discretionary power when applying the fine. In Chaoyang, one of the richest districts in Beijing, the social cost of upbringing is 10 times the cardinal number compared to five to six times in Changping, a suburb in northern Beijing. The gap may amount to more than 180,000 yuan, yet it is hard to say that a child born in Chaoyang would consume more resources and be a heavier burden on society than one born in Changping.

Similarly, it's unfair to say that an "extra" member of a rich family will necessarily consume more social resources than one from a less well-off family. If the rich are levied a higher social cost of upbringing charge, it is like a punishment for being rich, which contradicts the stated purpose of the fees.

The second controversy is who should pay. According to the current enforcement practice, it is not just couples who breach the family planning policy that are required to pay. That is to say, lovers in a romantic relationship who have a child before entering into marriage, teenagers who get pregnant accidentally, and a woman who has a child as a result of an affair with a married man have to pay the social cost of upbringing for their child. The same applies to a couple who adopt another child besides their own. It looks like the policy has become a means of safeguarding the orthodox status of marriage and condemning sex outside marriage. Clearly, in this part, it has deviated from original intention.

Finally, the unsupervised management of the money paid to local governments as the social cost of upbringing has incited discontent among the public. Based on information disclosed by 24 provincial governments, the amount they received in social cost of upbringing payments was 20 billion yuan in 2012 alone. The actual sum will be even bigger since some provinces have not disclosed their figures yet. Knowing the whereabouts of this money or what it has been used for is certainly essential. This is especially so since there have been reports that the money which is supposed to go to the national treasury in accordance with the State Council's requirement has been held back by local governments to pay salaries or benefits for employees, or fallen into the pockets of certain officials. In practice, due to the lack of an overall nationwide management system, it is almost impossible to trace exactly how much money is collected and where it goes. So the cost of upbringing has becomes a grey area and fertile soil for corruption.

The fate of charging the social cost of upbringing is closely tied to China's family planning policy. The policy has been loosened, but it is unlikely to be abolished completely in the foreseeable future. First, couples are obliged to follow family planning according to the Constitution. To respect its supremacy and maintain its stability, the Constitution is unlikely to be amended any time soon. A possible solution would be to interpret family planning in a wider way. But that would need to be done by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress which is the only body with the power to interpret the Constitution, so it may take some time.

Second, China is still a country with a huge population and limited resources, which means that controlling the population remains necessary. Whether there would be a population explosion if the family planning policy was abolished is unknown, but it would be risky to drop it completely at a single stroke.

In the near future, the social cost of upbringing will continue to be charged for violations of the family planning policy, but the system needs restructuring and closer monitoring. For instance, the central government should establish unified criteria for whom is to be charged and formulate a more detailed operating system to reduce the discretionary powers of local governments. In addition, people who are currently charged purely from a moral judgment should not be required to pay -moral judgments should be left to the court of public opinion or the Marriage Law. Last, but by no means least, strict monitoring of the payments and regular auditing should take place and the people concerned should be accountable for it and there should be regular public disclosure of information to ensure that the system is transparent.

The author is a fellow at the research office of Shunyi district people's court in Beijing. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily European Weekly 01/10/2014 page13)