"One more baby means one more tomb!" China Changing Child Controls

China Bans Crude Birth Control Slogans August 5, 2007 - 5:10am

BEIJING (AP) - 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 Sunday.

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, the 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. Critics say it has led to forced abortions, sterilizations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio due to a traditional preference for male heirs, which has prompted countless families to abort female fetuses in hopes of getting boys.

The Chinese government contends that the one-child policy has helped prevent at least 300 million births _ about the size of the U.S. population _ and aided China's recent, rapid economic development.

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.

Examples of authorized slogans include "Mother earth is too tired to sustain more children" and "Both boys and girls are parents' hearts," it said.

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 and even tarnishing the image of the government," Xinhua reported.

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