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Subscribe to RSSBEIJING – A 13-month-old child was fatally crushed by a car containing Chinese officials after they went to collect a fine from the parents for breaching the country’s one-child policy, according to Chinese state media.
The incident reportedly occurred Monday in Dongshantou village near Wenzhou city in the eastern province of Zhejiang, after a delegation of 11 officials from the Ruian Town birth control office drove out to get the unspecified fine.
This did not go down well with the father, Chen Liandi, 39, and the conversation got heated.
According to a briefing given by the Ruian Municipal Propaganda Department and reported by state media, the officials convinced Chen’s wife, Li Yuhong, to accompany them back to Ruian to talk over the couple’s options.
The baby was reportedly left in the hands of his father and the group got back into their cars to leave.
What happened next remains unclear – perhaps due to the politically sensitive nature of this story – but the boy was then found crushed underneath a car.
He was rushed to the Third People’s Hospital in Ruian, but could not be saved.
'You were too careless'
On China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, users expressed frustration over the vague account given by Ruian officials and demanded more information, but no other Chinese press have printed much beyond the official government account.
For many in China, the story brings back uncomfortable memories of Feng Jiemei, who last June posted gruesome photographs of her lying in a hospital bed next to her 7-month-old aborted fetus.
Feng’s story created a social firestorm for Beijing when word got out that the 22-year-old mother had been forced to have the abortion because she did not have enough money to pay the $6,400 fine for having a second child.
“I told you, $6,400, not even a penny less. I told your dad that and he said he has no money,” a family planning official wrote to Deng in a blunt text message that quickly went viral. “You were too careless, you didn’t think this was a big deal.”
Feng was grabbed from her home and taken to a local hospital in her native Shaanxi province where she was blindfolded, thrown on a bed and forced to a sign a document she couldn’t read. Thirty hours later, her baby girl was aborted.
China has long defended its one-child policy as a way to prevent overpopulation and to help raise living standards across the country.
However, some experts in China and abroad argue that the policy has outlived its usefulness and may instead be a detriment to future growth.
Others in China have pointed out the abuses meted out in cases like Feng Jiemei’s show that it causes more social harm and have called on Beijing to remove it.
However Beijing just last month reaffirmed its support for the policy.
NBC News’ Le Li contributed to this report.
Related:
China: One-child policy is here to stay
Leave a Comment:
Killing the already born is murder-and no fancy dan rhetoric and conceal that. And why such a high fine that is beyond the reach of most households?
Sandy, don't worry. Baby Boomers are 27% of the population and the largest force of employed people. In 10 years from now there will not be enough people to fill the job market and because of our lack of reproducing we will have to let immigrants fill the work force. So, America will be run by foreigners within 20 years anyway
The One Child Rule would work only if it were for all levels of society,
otherwise we end up with a world filled with the very rich and that's
about all.
My parents could only afford to have two kids and several years
apart at that...the Romney's on the other hand can breed like rats and then
send all those boys out to try to get elected and take over the country.
BTW I really wish the people here would stop referring to atheism as the religion
of China. I don't buy into an invisible old man in the sky and think those who do
are weak and in need of psychiatric help.
Very well said" LazLong".THANK YOU!
Not to worry, there's 2 billion more
Amazing, in China the government forces people to have an abortion; in the USA, the Christian Taliban, via the government, make it so difficult for a woman to have an abortion, that it's often nearly impossible.
You LOVE to kill kids don't ya leftist!???
How many billions people does China have? They def need population control...but clearly it's not working.
The issue with reproductive rights in America is that the White Christian Meerkins
are filled with the fear of the foreign. That is why OUR president terrifies them. He simply
does not look like what they think an American should look like.
China has many many problems, but this law is logical and indeed needed.
And as for the welfare children that cannot be taken care of by their parents in America....
keep in mind that MOST of them live in the SOUTH EAST of the nation in the very very REDest
of states. Sorry to offend, but the last thing we need in this country are more people waiting for the
south to rise again.
The policy is EVIL.
I don't like the fact that a child got run over by a car one bit, but I do have to say living in the United States with likes of octomom and those crowd of wierdos, the duggars with like thirty kids, Kate plus 8, TEEN MOM on MTV..etc, I'm sure you get my drift, I think population limitation may not be such a bad thing, I am a minority and I grew up extremely poor, so I feel within my right to say this, it IS mostly the lower financial class of people not particularly any race because, white Americans and black Americans do it too, that over populate, Knowing that they have no foreseeable to pay for this child or care for this child or any of the others they keep popping out, they don't see a need for birth control or they want to stay on some kind of government assistance because in the U.S you can a check every month being loose skank with brood illegitimate children!! great career! Hope we don't end up like India, those fools like a bucket full of crabs crawling all over each other with no space to sleep or live no food, no laws and rampant crime, I had to choose only between Indian and China, I think as strict as it is China may seem better. Also I could a job either making i phones and walmart crap! (jk)
EVIL Ned?
Sounds like a religious term. No the policy is sound and logical
and that is why those who need the crutch of religion find it simply
unthinkable.
It's odd that so many rightwing types would complain about China
and do so loudly when other than this one policy they have made
their country what the rightwing Meerkins want here. No laws or regulations
for polution or business and no minimum wage. No child labor laws and no
unions and mandatory military service. As well as the fact that the female was
and in far too many ways still is considered a second class citizen...That sounds
like rightwing utopia!
The problem with population is not with how many people are born. The problem is through advancement in medical treatments we are living longer (past natural death) and the problem is how we live. Do you really need a 5 bedroom house? Live smaller, more conservative lives, even more than one family to a house and you have less land being used, fewer cars driven, etc.
The South China Morning post (HKG) has a slightly but significantly different report
Reproductive freedom includes the right of women to give birth to children also. There are more effective and less coercive solutions to curb overpopulation. Tragic story.
The headline is in bad taste and is unnecessarily inflammatory. It gives the impression that the Chinese officials purposely crushed the child under the car.
I'm thinking we need to imitate some of these Chinese population control techniques. Sick and tired of paying for career welfare mothers popping out kid after kid with every loser they come across on my dime. We need a one child policy here in the U.S. too, regardless if you're on welfare or not. There's no reason people should be breeding like rabbits nowadays when there's already 7 billion+ of us here. And for those who think I don't practice what I preach, my husband and I are gloriously child-free and intend on staying that way.
Wow! Those Chinks mean business! If they say "one kid per household" they ain't kidding!
Sorry Karen, medical advancement is not a bad thing.
Natural Death? The question is not Why do people die,
but...Why Should people have to die?
There is a finite amount of everything to go around and we
all know it so the wars and constant comepetition are a complete
waste of time and energy.
I for one would like to be
around indefinatly.
Sounds just like the Obama administration and the MSM...
What does Dee? Logic and rational thinking instead of
screaming at the clouds?
As cruel as this is, so too is the callousness by which 55,000,000 children have been killed since Roe V Wade. Planned Parenthood alone accounted for nearly 1 million babies killed at taxpayer expense. It is now over $1.2 billion in US taxpayers funds for killing babies. Before we attack China, look to ourselves and hang our own heads in shame. Innocent blood will not bring God's blessings and America does not deserve blessings when it has innocent blood on its hands. Every 94 seconds a child is killed here in America.
get over the hocus-pocus. The thing went down 2000 years AGO! Great story but does not apply to today
Note: This is the country all the captains of our industries are falling over themselves to do business with. I wonder if our industries would have shipped manufacturing to Germany during WW II because the Germans built very good machines...
Lets try to make the Chinese look heartless while Obamacare pays for yet another abortion.
Eleven officials to collect a fine? And we think our government is bloated!
ZPG!!!!!!!!!!!!ZPG!!!!!!!!!!!ZPG!!!!!!!!!!!! Can everybody here me now!!!
Stop with the abortion is murder god is sad crap.
Had all of those births gone to term the country would now
be in the grips of a Major crime wave perpetrated by a
population of angry, bitter former orphans who feel unloved
and unwanted and hateful toward all of society.
Full access to ALL forms of birth control and a complete logical
explanation to the youth of this nation on how to use them will eliminate
most of the problem that rightwingers have with abortion, but they would rather
that those also be banned so as to add to the numbers of the dwindling White Christian
rightwingers.
It also makes their invisible buddy in the sky cry.
Lazlong you are an idiot. Abortion is murder. Funny how all of you socialist/statist/leftists have bought into this overpopulation garbage and are in favor of killing the unborn and the elderly. The earth can support 100 billion people with modern farming techniques and yet people are starving the world over as a result of socialist and communist governments who use food to control their populations. Show me a famine and starvation and I will show you a government run by marxist pigs such as yourself. Many countries now have a depopulation problem. Not enough younger workers entering the workforce to support the elderly with their socialist programs. If government did not force people to pay for other peoples children and if everyone took responsibility for their own children this would never be a problem!