China to Relax One Child Policy for Quake Victims
China is relaxing its one-child policy for earthquake survivors, giving some solace to grieving parents whose children were killed or disabled.
Couples whose only child was killed, severely injured or disabled in the quake can get a certificate allowing them to have another child, the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee, which oversees the policy in the capital of Sichuan Province, said Monday.
The May 12 earthquake was especially painful to many Chinese because it killed many children from one-child families. The destruction of almost 7,000 classrooms during a single school day stunned China, with newspaper photos focusing on piles of dusty schoolbags and small hands extending from the debris.
With so many broken families asking questions, the Chengdu committee is clarifying existing one-child policy guidelines to make them specific to the families of quake victims, a committee official who gave only his surname, Wang, said. “There are just a lot of cases now,” he said.
Chen Xueyun is one of them. His 8-year-old son, Weixi, was killed when the family apartment in Qingchuan collapsed. Chen said he searched three days before finding the boy’s body. He wears his son’s blue plastic watch as a reminder.