China Fining Parents for Second Kid Born Before One-Child Policy Scrapped

On the first day of China’s 2017 Lunar New Year, a shop owner in Zhejiang province said he found an enforcement notice posted on his front door that ordered his family, whose monthly income is less than 10,000 yuan ($1,450), to pay an overdue fine of 170,000 yuan for having a second child.

The fine, dubbed a “social maintenance fee,” is in effect a punishment for violating China’s now-defunct one-child policy. The shop owner’s second child was born in July 2014, well before Beijing scrapped its three-decade-old one-child rule in October 2015, allowing all couples in China to have a second child. The new law took effect the following Jan. 1.