Court triggers debate by seizing savings of couple with third child

A local court's announcement that it seized about 23,000 yuan ($3,400) from a couple who failed to pay a fine for having a third child has sparked heated debate about the ruling's legitimacy.

The couple, residents of a village in Chengwu county, in Heze, Shandong province, welcomed their third child into the world on Jan 5, 2017, but didn't pay the required social maintenance fee of 64,626 yuan, according to a notice released by the Chengwu County People's Court on Sunday. Provincial regulations require that the fee be paid within 30 days.

Social maintenance fees, which were formerly classified as fines for having more than one child, are collected by local governments from families who have more children than allowed - two in most regions - to compensate the authorities for the child's future use of social resources.

The ruling comes at a time when the country appears to be placing more emphasis on encouraging births, after two years of dwindling birthrates, as seen in the repeal of the one-child limit in late 2015 and a string of calls from demographers to create an environment that encourages couples to have children.

While some netizens questioned whether the court's decision was lawful, and said it may further dampen the already withering enthusiasm to have more than one child, officials and experts mostly defended the ruling from a legal perspective.

An official in the publicity department of the Heze government who asked not to be named said the local health and legal authorities were simply abiding by the national law.

The official confirmed that levying social administration fees on families with a third child is legally binding and that the court's decision doesn't constitute a breach of any law or regulation.

Yu Jianrong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Rural Development Institute, said on Monday that he felt "torn" over the court ruling.

"On one hand, the enforcement is appropriate if related regulations are clear. On the other, the normal lives of the children in the family might be disrupted after their savings were seized," he said.

A legislator suggested last year that all content about family planning should be removed from existing laws, but the National Health Commission said last month that China should not abolish family planning at the moment.

In a statement posted on its website, it said all laws concerning population and family planning in China were made based on the Constitution, which endorses the implementation of family planning. It was thus inappropriate to immediately remove all articles concerning family planning from existing laws, it said.

Official figures show that the number of births in China has been declining for two years, even with the implementation of the second-child policy in 2016. The policy allows all couples in China to have two children.

A continuation of low birthrates could cause problems such as a more rapidly aging population and a dwindling workforce. Many experts have called for further relaxation of the family planning policy in recent years.

Wang Xiaodong contributed to this story.