China Drops One-Child Policy for Quake Victims

BEIJING — China has said it will drop its one-child policy for the parents of children who died in the Sichuan earthquake.The Population and Family Planning Committee in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, said the exemption could also apply to those whose children were disabled or seriously injured.The announcement, which applies to Chengdu and neighboring cities Dujiangyan and Pengzhou, may have been timed in an effort to calm the mounting anger among parents whose children died in the disaster.School buildings were disproportionately damaged by the tremors and parents blame the collapses on shoddy building work and, in some cases, corruption.The latest march took place in the town of Mianzhu on Sunday, where parents of the 127 children who died at Fuxin No2 Primary School demonstrated — despite pleas from the local communist party chief, who went down on his knees to beg them to stop, according to one paper.The parents were taken to meet a more senior official, but said the panel appointed to investigate the school’s collapse lacked credibility.The Chinese government said yesterday that more than 65,000 people died in the disaster, and has previously said that at least 9,000 of those were children and teachers who were in class when the earthquake struck. The government is also struggling to deal with 5,500 children who were orphaned by the earthquake.Another newspaper told how five babies were stolen from a hospital by traffickers fulfilling an order placed in Shandong on the east coast. Trafficking of children for money remains a common social problem in China.The six traffickers were arrested after checking in to a hostel with the children, who had been separated from their parents.

China Drops One-Child Policy for Quake Victims

China Drops One-Child Policy for Quake Victims

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