Jailed for Having a Baby
In China, strict enforcement of 1-child-per-family policy
By Edward A. Gargan, Asia Correspondent
Originally published in Newsday, May 27, 2001
XIAOJING, China — Lin Fenglin cradled her infant son in her arms and scurried stealthily across the rain-spattered pan of concrete toward a low, white-tiled building. Behind her, in red sweatpants and a blue T-shirt, scampered her other son, 4 years old.
At a barred gate, a grizzled, disheveled warder shooed her toward a cell, fumbled with its padlock and shushed her inside.
"Quick, quick, quick," he insisted, clanging shut the door. "You must be quick." At this rural village in Fujian province in southeast China, Lin visits her husband on weekends.
The solitary weekend guard—a local farmer who sympathizes with the family—ushers her into the cell of her husband, Lin Sunjie. Inside the dank, concrete chamber, under the glare of a bare light bulb, she passes her month-old infant to his father.
The baby "is why I am here," Lin Sunjie told a visiting journalist. Gently rocking the dozing child, he said, "We had a second son and the police have put me here because I cannot pay the fine."
The fine is $3,292, nearly five times the Lin family's annual income, which, at about $700, is typical in their rural community in the southeastern province of Fujian.
For years, China has strictly limited couples to a single child to slow the growth of its population, now at 1.3 billion. But the stories of the Lins and many others underscore that, these days, local officials in much of the country enforce the rule more as a way of raising cash, by demanding huge, arbitrary sums from rural families who have two or more children. Those who have the money to bribe officials can have large families. But when poorer families go bankrupt trying to pay, husbands find themselves locked in jail without trial, often indefinitely.
In Fujian, a hothouse of corruption scandals and smuggling of emigrants abroad, township and village officials wield virtually unchecked powers over their localities. And especially as officials watch relatives of illegal emigrants building immense houses with money sent back from Europe and the United States, they see lucrative pickings.
In isolated villages like the Lins', where farmers earn relatively little from growing peanuts, watermelons or rice, the power of officials can cripple families and shatter lives.
Last week, Sun Zhonghua, a 34-year-old mother of two, died, apparently after she was beaten for refusing to be sterilized in the Fujian village of Songcheng. Officials say Sun jumped from the fourth floor of a birth control administration building after being dragged from her home to be forcibly sterilized.
Her relatives told the Associated Press in Beijing that her face was horribly bruised, suggesting that she had been pummeled by police before her death. They said they complained to the police and local officials but were rebuffed.
With her husband in jail, Lin Fenglin also faces the prospect of sterilization. "They are going to force me," she said. "If I don't cooperate, they will make me pay money, pay a big fine."
Fully 38 percent of Chinese women of child-bearing age have been sterilized, according to government data, while scarcely 9 percent of men have been vasectomized.
As officials apply fines and sterilization with force, farmers in some Fujian villages have been reeling from an almost vigilante-like surge in attacks on families with two children.
An official at the Political and Legal Affairs Office of China's State Planning Commission in Beijing, who identified himself only as Mr. Zhou, said localities have substantial leeway in enforcing the one-child policy. "It's up to the local government to decide the fine," he said. "We do not set the figure."
Along a dirt road in the village of Qianlong, Wu Shaohai, a gaunt, aged farmer, slumped against a stone slab and bewailed the jailing of his son.
"He had a daughter before he was married," Wu said. "He was 23 and she was 19. Here, women cannot marry until they are 21. But he could not wait." In 1997, officials demanded 11,000 yuan as a fine, he said. "We borrowed that sum and paid them. Then last December they said we must pay a total of 24,000 yuan," about $2,926.
"Last December they came and took him to jail. They said, 'Once you pay the money we will let him out,'" Wu said. "I have no money," he whispered. "I've already borrowed so much. How can I borrow more?"
Wu, who wore a dirt-smudged shirt and ancient, fraying trousers, said his family has barely a tenth of an acre of farmland. "We used to grow peanuts, but with my son in jail I cannot work the land. Now I take care of his daughter. I have no way now." Mournfully, he recited an adage of hopelessness: "If I go to heaven there is no road. If I go to hell, there is no gate."
Historically, Chinese farming families have depended on children to work the land and care for parents in their old age. In often harsh poverty, many children did not survive long, so people sought to have as many as possible.
During two decades of severe controls on population growth, Beijing has put its strictest limits on urban couples. Not only are they allowed only a single child, but—despite an abundance of abandoned children—they are forbidden from having a second through adoption.
Rural couples are permitted a second child if their first is a daughter. In the remotest and poorest provinces, such as Anhui or Gansu, however, many families have three or more children. Ethnic minorities, such as the Uighurs of northwestern China or Tibetans, are allowed as many children as they like.
In her village, Lin Fenglin struggles to scrape together enough food so that her husband can eat every day in jail and wonders whether he will ever be released. "I told them we have nothing to eat, let alone enough money to pay them," Lin said. "They told me I should get sterilized. I said if you let my husband out I will go. They said no."
