Sun, from Longwang County in northeast China’s Jilin Province, used to believe, as most Chinese farmers do, that a son is the only dependable laborer, while a daughter can do nothing to help the family get rich.

“Now I’m not thinking about wanting to have a son anymore,” Sun said while counting cash earned from his winter sale of vegetables. “I see little difference between a daughter and a son now.”

Sun’s family income has increased several times now he is able to plant vegetables.

Like Sun, more farmers with one child in the region have started various businesses and become well off using support from the local government.

Jilin has managed to maintain a low birth rate over the past 20 years by encouraging people to conform to the national family planning policy through education and financial support.

Among 600,000 farmers who took part in vocational education arranged by official departments last year, one-sixth are no longer in poverty.

Local government has allocated nearly 200 million yuan (US$24 million) to poverty-stricken families that abide by the birth-related policy to help them start a business.

“Our efforts have resulted in a reduction of the population by 10 million in the past 20 years,” said Han Guiren, director of the provincial Family Planning Commission.

About 600,000 young men and women in Jilin Province have reached marrying age every year since 1990, local statistics show.

If each couple had two children, the large population would exert great pressure on the province’s economy, society, resources, environment and sustainable development, Han said.

“We’ve been trying to encourage late marriages and late child birth, fostering fewer, but healthier children and trying to establish the concept of equal social status between men and women,” said Han.

The idea of family planning has been widely integrated into entertainment activities, including paper-cutting, painting, singing and dancing contests, storytelling and other festivities.

China, the world’s largest developing country, with a population of more than 1.2 billion, takes the family planning as one of the most important policies.

The issue of population is vital to the country’s socialist modernization and family planning is in the long-term interests of the Chinese nation, said Wang Zhongyu, state councilor and secretary-general of the State Council.

“The birth rate and natural growth rate of China’s population have been cut since 1970, but the country is still under pressure from a large growing population,” Zhang Wenqing, head of the State Family Planning Commission, was quoted as saying.

According to a decision on population and family planning, issued by the central government last year, the country plans to keep its population under 1.4 billion by the end of 2010, with an average birth rate of 1.5 percent.

Family planning will remain a tough task in the country and the work of family planning should be centerd on the overall development of human beings, said Wang.

(Xinhua 02/01/2001)