China outlaws crude one-child slogans

CHINA’S top family planning agency has cracked down on crude and insensitive slogans used by rural authorities to enforce the country’s strict population limits, state media said yesterday.

Slogans such as “Raise fewer babies but more piggies”, and “One more baby means one more tomb”, have been forbidden and a list of 190 acceptable slogans issued by the National Population and Family Planning Commission, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Such slogans are often found painted on roadside buildings in rural areas.

China’s 28-year-old family planning policy limits most urban couples to just one child and allows some families in the countryside to have a second child if their first is a girl.

Xinhua said slogans such as “Houses toppled, cows confiscated, if abortion demand rejected”, threatened to undermine China’s efforts to keep the population under control. Among the authorised slogans is “Mother earth is too tired to sustain more children”.

The commission said some slogans left the impression that the government was “simply forcing people to give up having more babies, causing misunderstanding [of] the policy”, Xinhua reported.

The Chinese government contends that the one-child policy has helped prevent at least 300 million births.