Officials belonging to the Communist Party of China (CPC) in central Henan Province, the nation's most populous region, will be barred from promotion if they have more children than the law allows, the provincial CPC chief warned on Wednesday.

Any CPC official in Henan who violated state family planning law would be punished according to party disciplinary codes or government regulations, said Xu Guangchun, secretary of the CPC Henan Provincial Committee, at a conference on population and family planning.

They would be prohibited from serving as department leaders or obtaining promotions, Xu said.

"Any mistake in population work would have an irreversible impact on the rise of central China. We must make a low birth rate the top priority in our population and family planning work," he said.

Xu also vowed to punish celebrities and wealthier couples for having more children than the state family planning law allows, in response to a growing chorus of complaints that the privileged were having more children than ordinary people.

Henan is the most populous province in China, with a population of more than 97 million.

The provincial government has vowed to keep its population within 101 million by 2010 and 107 million by 2020.

To curb population growth, China's family planning policy was enacted in the late 1970s to encourage late marriages and late childbearing, and it limited most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two.

The policy is credited with preventing more than 400 million births since it was introduced.

In Henan, officials estimate 33 million births have been prevented due to the policy.

The policy was upgraded to the Population and Family Planning Law in December 2001 at the 25th session of the Ninth National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, and the law came into effect in September 2002.

Most Chinese provinces allow couples who are both single children themselves to have a second child, but Henan does not.

But China's family planning policy is not simply a "one-child policy," according to Wang Guoqiang, deputy director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

Wang said in January that couples in large cities and some rural areas are permitted to have only one child. But in rural areas of 19 provinces, couples are allowed to have a second child if the first one is a girl. In five provinces and regions, couples in rural areas are permitted to have more than two children. In regions inhabited by ethnic minorities, couples are permitted to have more than two children.

(Xinhua News Agency March 29, 2007)