Rich people should be fined more

Beijing Times
March 25, 2009

During a local radio broadcast yesterday, Beijing Family Planning Commission director Deng Xingzhou, spoke of the need to levy higher fines on violators of the one-child policy. Rich and famous people ignoring the law has become a serious issue, and the government is seeking to revise its regulations to tie the amount of the fine to the income of wealthy violators.

In Beijing, fines currently range from three to eight times of the average annual income in the city, which may not act as much of a deterrent to people making orders of magnitude more than the average.

Family planning has been in the news quite a bit recently, and Deng himself has been talking about the need to go after wealthy violaters since at least January.

Also on today’s front page is a report on the trial of two former policemen charged with beating a university student to death in Harbin last October. The case generated heated debate about whether it showed abuse of power on the part of the police, or if Lin Songling was unfortunately killed while the police were defending themselves from attack.

A friend of the deceased who was also involved in the fighting that night is also on trial.

The former policemen’s lawyer filed a plea of not guilty, but the court had not announced a ruling before the newspaper went to print.