Zhang Yimou asked to declare income after breaching family planning rules
Print Edition
Movie director Zhang Yimou’s three children were all born out of wedlock and in violation of China’s family planning policy, an initial investigation has shown.
Zhang and his wife Chen Ting registered their marriage in September 2011, but their children were born in 2001, 2004 and 2006 in Beijing. Having children before marriage is a violation of provincial family planning rules, officials in Wuxi said yesterday.
The family planning commission in Wuxi, a city in eastern Jiangsu Province and Chen’s hometown, has asked Zhang for details of his income in order to calculate fines.
Under Jiangsu regulations, each spouse of a couple violating the one-child policy faces a fine four times the average local disposable income in the year before the child is born.
If the couple has two or more additional children, the fine is five to eight times that figure. And if a couple’s income is twice the local disposable income, the part exceeding the average earnings will be charged one to two times.
According to the Jiangsu Statistics Bureau, Wuxi residents had an average disposable income of 8,604 yuan (US$1,412) in 2000, 11,647 yuan in 2003 and 16,005 yuan in 2005.
It was reported that Zhang earns 15 million yuan to 20 million yuan per movie and, according to news portal www.ifeng.com, he got 80 million yuan in 2004 alone.
Claims that Zhang had breached family planning rules emerged in May with online reports, dismissed by his office, that he had at least seven children with four women. On Sunday, Zhang responded for the first time, admitting that he and Chen had two sons and a daughter. He will accept punishment according to regulations, his office said.
Zhang, 63, one of China’s best-known film directors, made his directorial debut in 1987 with “Red Sorghum” that was adapted from one of Nobel laureate Mo Yan’s novels. His films include “Raise the Red Lantern” and “House of Flying Daggers.”
China’s one-child policy limits most urban couples to one child and allows rural families two if the firstborn is a girl. The government introduced the policy in the late 1970s to curb a surging population. Last month, the Party announced that it would allow couples to have two children in future if just one of the parents was an only child.
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