State media reports the government has decided to kill a few hundred chickens to scare the tens of thousands of monkeys using political position and money to violate state family-planning policy. From the Associated Press via the International Herald Tribune:
More than 93,000 people in Hubei province violated the policy last year, including hundreds of officials, lawmakers and political advisers, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
It said 395 offenders were dismissed from their posts but it wasn’t immediately clear if they were included in the 500 who were expelled from the Communist Party. It also wasn’t clear if the other offenders were penalized. Fines are another common punishment. [Full Text]
See the state-run Shanghai Daily’s “Rich ‘flaunt’ one child law,” about violations of the one-child policy in Hubei, a piece from last week that presaged the crackdown.
See also, “New Family Planning Policy Attacks Elites’ Egos,” from China Daily last October; and, for a non-state view, the BBC’s “Grey Areas in China’s One-Child Policy” from last September.
[Image: Family planning officials distribute propaganda in the Hubei countryside, from chinapop.gov.cn]