Tibetans Receive Certificates for 1

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Tibetans Receive Certificates for 1-Child Policy

Xinhua report issued 23 June 1999

The Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China's Sichuan Province has given 822 households certificates for one-child couples. The family planning concept of local people has been changing with the rapid economic development, according to Zhou Licheng, the deputy director of the provincial Religious Affairs Commission. Tibetans in the prefecture in western Sichuan were allowed to have two children in the family planning regulations but more now prefer to have one child, and herdsmen, who were allowed to have three children, now want only two. Tibetans in the prefecture were allowed to have two or three children at the beginning of the one- couple-one-child policy in the early 1970s because the birth rate was relatively low. In line with the changing family planning concept, the Standing Committee of the prefectural People's Congress recently submitted a bill to the Standing Committee of the provincial People's Congress, asking that the local family planning policy be revised because of social changes. Before new China was founded, the average life expectancy of people in the prefecture was only 29. Then the figure rose to 55 in the early 1980s and the prefecture's population has increased from 480,000 to 870,000 in five decades. The purpose of the revisions in the regulations is to encourage new birth control concepts and help families become richer first. The revised regulations provides preferential treatment for one- child families in various aspects, including school enrollment, medical care, and employment.