 In recent years, the cases of rich and famous people going against population control policy are on the increase. Now the government says it is going to put these people on a black list and punish them severely. They will not be allowed to receive any honors from society.
Will the measures be fair and effective? There are different responses in the public media.
Reporter:
One opinion from the Chinese Business View says it’s hard to put the measures into practice. First of all, how do you judge whether a person is a celebrity or not? Apart from entertainment and sports stars, can a well known university professor, a government official or a columnist also be regarded as a celebrity? How much money must a person own to be counted as rich? All of these things are not written in law.
Also, the writer points out that the law should treat all citizens equally. There is no reason why celebrities and rich people should be punished more severely than the poor for making the same mistakes. Also, these sorts of problems are more common amongst poor people, therefore, we must give equal attention to the rich and poor.
One article from the South Net says it’s necessary to give severe punishment to the rich and famous people, because increasing births amongst these people would worsen the gap between rich and poor.
The article says there should be more legal measures dealing with the problem than the current way of collecting a social compensation fee for additional births. For people with money, the few thousand bucks fine means nothing. It also suggests setting up a credibility system that would connect personal and business credibility with child birth numbers. When the overall cost of having more children becomes really high, these people will rethink the issue.
One opinion from the Hainan Daily thinks it’s unfair to relate more childbirth to only the rich and famous. Over birth also happens in poor families. The issue should be treated equally for all, no matter what their economic and social background is.
Another opinion from the China Youth Daily says it’s unnecessary to single out rich and famous people in this regard. It explains that, apart from government officials who should set examples in law-abiding, the rest of the population are just ordinary people.
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