The change in family planning policy from inflicting fines on those rural couples with more than two children to awarding those who have only one child or two girls has achieved preliminary success.

Some 1.85 million model villagers in rural areas are beginning to receive pensions of at least 600 yuan (US$76) a year.

The policy holds that a rural couple that has given birth to only one child or two girls will receive an annual pension of at least 600 yuan from age 60 until their death.

Furthermore, forms of preferential treatment such as bonuses for those certified as having one-child families and the exemption of all expenses for the education of single children have been added to this policy in many localities.

The new approach was first carried out on a trial basis in some provinces and autonomous regions in 2004, and will be implemented in rural villages nationwide beginning this year. The State Population and Family Planning Commission confirms that it is a long-term, stable policy that will be carried out for several decades at least.

Behind this new approach is a conceptual change in governance from an approach dominated by a condescending attitude to one made with consideration for how rural villagers can benefit from giving birth to fewer children.

Rural villages have been a hard nut to crack in family planning work for years. Villagers do not have a pension system to take care of them when they become old, and it is natural that they always wish to have more children who can take care of them in their old age.

But the result is a vicious circle: the poorer a villager is, the more children he expects to have; and the more children he has, the poorer he becomes.

The penalty-dominated policy has contributed a lot to population control in rural areas, but in a passive manner. And it has the side effect of estranging villagers from local family planning workers, as the fines and other penalties create enmity between them.

In contrast, by providing a basic pension system for those who have a single child or two girls to depend on in their old age, the new policy offers villagers another solution.

From this perspective, the new policy adopts a much more pragmatic and considerate approach by relieving villagers of their worries about their possible helpless old age.

Some 240,000 rural couples got certificates for one-child families in Yunnan Province alone in 2004, when the policy was implemented. This figure is twice the total number the province recorded in the previous 30 years. The same is true in other provinces.

Villagers, it seems, welcome this policy - and thus we have reason to believe that the nation will do an even better job in its family planning programme.

(China Daily October 20, 2006)