China to launch eugenics plan

C HINA is set to adopt a controversial eugenics program in a dramatic move to restructure its decade-old family planning policy.

The move, already accepted by the State Council, is likely to raise the hackles of human rights activists worldwide.

Eugenics - selective breeding of humans to attain a certain type - has been pushed by Chinese scientists and medical experts for some time.

Chinese planners are disturbed by a trend of increasing birth rates in rural and poor regions and a lowering of the rate among the country's intellectual and urban elite in the rich coastal areas.

Critics of current practices say the official "one-child" policy is hampering growth in better-educated urban areas while political motivations are allowing families to have more children in impoverished areas populated by minorities.

Urban dwellers and better educated people will be encouraged to have more babies while the peasantry will be discouraged.

In the West, eugenics is most widely associated with Hitler's Third Reich, which practised it before and during World War II.

China, with an estimated population of 1.3 billion - a quarter of the world's humanity - is to introduce the new policy in stages.

Firstly, birth control policy in the impoverished regions will be tightened.

Mainland experts successfully argued that "quality stock" is essential to China's modernisation but that current trends would lead to a lower quality of people.

According to official figures, birth rates have increased remarkably in recent years in rural and poor regions while those in coastal cities have dropped.

Shanghai was the first Chinese city to experience negative population growth since 1992 due to the low birth rate.

Persistent lobbying by scientists and family planners led to the establishment of a task force last year under State Councillor and Minister for Family Planning Peng Peiyun to look into a long-term strategy for human resources development.

The task force - comprising scientists, doctors, family planners and economists - was also asked to look specifically into eugenics.

It reported back to the government recently and its recommendations of adopting eugenics were accepted.

The one-child policy has drawn strong condemnation from the West, especially from the United States. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration cancelled all family planning aid.

Human rights activists regard eugenics as interference with individual rights and an abuse of state power.

It is expected that Beijing will move very gingerly on this policy. It might even discourage public discussion of the subject.

Tiger's Eye: Page 12

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