Media reports say a five-year boy drowned in a pond in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, recently. The reports also say that the parents who lost their son have nine more children, and live in poor conditions earning a living by collecting waste. It is obvious that such a family needs social protection. But does it also deserve to be penalized for flouting the country's family planning policy? This is the question raised by an article in Beijing Times. Excerpts:

After one of their children drowned in the pond, the poor couple were offered a lot of help by local people and Pizhou city authorities offered hukou (household registration) to the rest of their children. Although their loss cannot be compensated, the couple can take solace in the fact that their children have been offered a lifeline to improve their lives.

It is good that the Pizhou local government has offered such help to the children despite their parents having violated the family planning policy, setting an example for other local governments to follow.

But it is a surprising that the governments of Suzhou and Pizhou cities didn't have any idea about this couple breaking the family planning policy. Perhaps the poor couple did so because they didn't have any knowledge about the policy, as investigations show. But then it is the responsibility of local governments to ensure that the family planning policy is strictly implemented.

In January, film director Zhang Yimou and his wife Chen Ting were ordered to pay a fine of 7.48 million yuan ($1.20 million) for breaking the family planning policy. Therefore, the exemption granted to the poor family could set a disturbing example.

But as Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poet and Nobel Literature Prize winner, once said, we keep many things in our lives waiting, but we should not keep our children waiting. So, society should not let the nine children of the poor family wait to enjoy the benefits of our social and economic development. But the local government has to give the public a convincing explanation on why the couple flouted the family planning policy, not once but nine times.

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(China Daily 06/16/2014 page9)