China plans to issue new policies to punish celebrities and well-off people for having more children than the state family planning policy allows, according to a senior government official.

The move came as the government witnesses an increasing number of complaints from the public saying celebrities and rich people are having more children than ordinary people.

"Celebrities and affluent people have more resources and are supposed to be role models, but their violation of family policy undermines social stability", according to a netizen on the People's Daily website.

Most families that have several children are private business owners with high incomes and not affiliated to any government organization, said Mu Weiyong, vice director of the family planning commission in China's northeast Liaoning province.

"The majority of the 700 cases we investigated since 2000 are wealthy private business owners, while in the decade before 2000, we only had 76 cases related to rich people", said Mu.

According to the state family planning policy, government workers will be punished by the party and their administration if they have more than one child. But no effective measures have been invented to punish celebrities and the rich as most of them are not affiliated to government organizations.

The majority of those public figures and rich people are willing to pay fines, but do not wish to see their reputation impugned, according to Yu Xuejun, director of Department of Policy Law and Regulations under the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

Celebrities and rich people's names will be recorded and they will no longer be allowed to compete in awards such as "honorary citizen" if they have two or more children, Yu added.

"Celebrities and rich people's honors should be abolished and government officials should be removed from their posts if they have more than one child", said Mu.

A recent survey conducted by the family planning commission showed that the majority of celebrities and rich people have two children, with 10 percent of them having three.

To curb the population explosion, China's family planning policy was enacted in the late 1970s to advocate one child for each family and encourage late marriages and childbearing.

As early as 2002, China's southern Guangdong Province pioneered measures to control the high birth rate in rich urban families. Offenders have to pay a fine equal to three to six times the local average annual income.

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

Source: Xinhua