Population policy breach to cost jobs to employees

Employees of both State-owned and private enterprises who breach the family planning regulations in some provinces in China will be "immediately fired."

South China's Hainan Province, and Southwest China's Yunnan and Guizhou provinces have stipulated that employees will be dismissed for breaching the new family planning policy allowing couples to have a second child, which went into effect on January 1, 2016, the Legal Daily reported on Friday.

Apart from Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur and Southwest China's Tibet autonomous regions, a total of 29 provinces and autonomous regions have revised their local family planning regulations. The new ones in 14 provinces rule that violators working in public sectors could be expelled if they breach the regulations.

Beijing parents with three or more children will be fined, while fines for parents with two children will be abolished, said a draft amendment on social maintenance fees issued by the Beijing government earlier.

However, in most provinces, such harsh punishments were imposed only on the employees of State-owned enterprises.

Seven provinces including Northeast China's Jilin and Northwest China's Gansu have refrained from issuing such regulations to deal with such violations, considering that the punishment may violate the Labor Contract Law.

Against the backdrop of a shrinking labor force and an aging society, China's top legislature decided in 2015 to relax family planning policy in place since 1982 that required parents who had two children to pay additional social maintenance fees.