완 공 앞둔 ‘아프리카 르네상스 기념상’ (다카르=연합뉴스) 박성진 특파원 = 아프리카 세네갈 다카르에 있는 ‘아프리카 르네상스 기념상’의 내부 공사가 이달 중으로 모두 끝나고 일반에 공개된다. 세네갈 독립 50주년을 기념하기 위한 이 조형물 공사에는 총 160억 프랑 세파(한화 370여억 원)가 들었으며 북한의 만수대 해외사업부가 공사를 맡았다. 2010.10.12 sungjinpark@yna.co.kr

세네갈서 대형 기념상 제작..차드에도 진출

(다카르=연합뉴스) 박성진 특파원 = 북한이 아프리카에서 대형 조형물을 잇달아 건설하고 있어 눈길을 끌고 있다.

북한은 세네갈에서 ‘아프리카 르네상스 기념상’을 건립한 데 이어 차드에서도 독립 50주년 기념물 조성 사업을 진행 중인 것으로 12일 알려졌다.

아프리카 르네상스 기념상의 건축가인 피에르 구디아비 아테파는 세네갈 다카르 자신의 건축 사무소에서 연합뉴스와 만나 이런 움직임을 공개했다.

아테파는 “북한이 만든 아프리카 르네상스 기념상에 대해 만족스럽게 생각한다”며 “차드에서도 북한과 새로운 사업에 착수했으며 앞으로 아프리카 곳곳에서 북한과 협력을 확대할 계획이다”라고 말했다. 하지만 그는 차드에서 진행 중인 사업에 대해 구체적인 언급을 하지는 않았다.

세네갈 독립 50주년을 기념하기 위한 아프리카 르네상스 기념상 공사에는 총 160억 프랑 세파(한화 370여억 원)가 들었으며 북한의 만수대 해외사업부가 공사를 맡았다.

다카르 국제공항 인근 대서양 연안에 세워진 이 조형물은 성인 남자가 여자와 아이를 안은 모습을 형상화하고 있으며 높이가 50ｍ로 미국 뉴욕의 자유의 여신상(46ｍ)보다 4ｍ 더 높다.

기념상 제막식은 지난 4월 압둘라예 와드 세네갈 대통령과 김영남 북한 최고인민회의 상임위원장 등 19개국 정상이 참가한 가운데 치러졌으나 전망대 공사 등 마무리 작업이 늦어지면서 이달에나 일반인에 공개될 예정이다.

북한은 앞서 ‘외화벌이’ 차원에서 아프리카 곳곳에서 대형 조형물이나 건설 공사에 참여해왔다.

지난 2000년대 초반 나미비아에 대통령궁전과 영웅릉, 군사박물관, 독립기념관 등을 지어 6천600만 달러를 벌었으며 앙골라에서 평화기념비와 문화센터 등을 건설하고 5천450만 달러를 받았다.

콩고민주공화국과 적도기니에도 정부청사와 스포츠경기장 등을 지었거나 건설 중이다.

이밖에 앙골라 수도 루안다에 있는 아고스티노 네토 대통령 동상 등 각종 지도자 동상 제작에도 참여했다.

대북 인터넷 매체인 데일리NK에 따르면 북한은 2000년대 이후 아프리카 국가들에서 공사를 수주해 최소 1억6천만달러(1천791억원)를 벌어들인 것으로 추정됐다.

sungjinpark@yna.co.kr

Interest in organic food on the rise in China

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Joshua Frank / Los Angeles Times

The organic Green Cow farm, 20 miles from central Beijing, was started in 2004.

With little help at home, nonprofits often rely on outside aid. But the government may be using tax, licensing laws to shut them down.

from the August 4, 2009 edition

Beijing – It began with a tax notice for $200,000. Three days later, on July 17, officials raided the group’s Beijing office and seized its computers. Then, just before dawn on July 29, police detained its founder, Xu Zhiyong at his home

On the same day, government officials went to the office of Yi Ren Ping, another nongovernmental organization, and confiscated copies of its newsletter on the grounds that it didn’t have a publishing license.

Taken together, the raids appear part of a tightening of controls on critical voices in the run-up to Oct. 1, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The two NGOs are among a growing number here using the law to hold authorities to account on issues such as food safety, patient rights, and illegal detention.

But they share another common thread: Both received grants from American and other foreign donors. The tax fine for Open Constitution Initiative, the group headed by Mr. Xu, was assessed largely on a donation from Yale Law School. Xu, a lawyer and elected legislator, is being detained on suspicion of tax evasion, according to an OCI official.

The harassment of these and other foreign-funded NGOs in Beijing has raised fears of a Russian-style squeeze on civil society. Since 2006, Russia has stripped the tax-free status of many foreign foundations and forced NGOs to report their activities in exhaustive detail, while accusing foreign-funded human rights groups of being Trojan horses for Western powers. It recently amended its NGO law, easing some of these controls.

An alternate view in Beijing is that the groups targeted had pushed too aggressively into forbidden political zones, setting off a reaction. NGO workers and experts on civil society say the investigations into taxes and licenses are a smokescreen for a clampdown on legal activism, including the recent disbarring of 20 civil rights lawyers in Beijing.

“It’s what you do with the money that matters,” says a researcher on Chinese NGOs, who declined to be named. He says investigations into foreign funding provide a “post hoc excuse” for authorities.

Foreign funds become a liability

Because of the difficulty of registering as nonprofits, many Chinese NGOs are listed as businesses. That makes them liable for potentially crippling tax demands, says Wan Yanhai, who runs an HIV/AIDS advocacy group in Beijing.

“This is a big issue. If there is a similar action [as OCI's tax case] against us, we could be fined tens of millions of yuan,” he says.

Mr. Wan and other activists say that soliciting foreign funds is routine for many NGOs in China. Some government officials are supportive as they also benefit from funding for public programs from the same foreign donors. And they tend to overlook the fact that foreign-funded NGOs were registered as businesses, say activists.

A crackdown on this practice – and the risk of a backdated tax bill – would be chilling, says Sara Davis, executive director of Asia Catalyst, a New York-based nonprofit that provides technical support to civil society groups in China.

“It’s a tough situation. For most grass-roots groups working on humanitarian and civil rights issues in China, there’s no domestic funding. They’re also not allowed to register as NGOs. That leaves very little option except to go to foreign donors,” she says.

Another dilemma for activists is that foreign donors often want to fund projects that rub against the grain in China, such as research into last year’s riots in Tibet, which inflamed foreign opinion. In a recent report, OCI said the official explanation that the Dalai Lama had fomented the unrest ignored the government’s own repressive actions in Tibet.

It also took up the cause of families suing companies that sold contaminated milk powder last year, until the practice was exposed. China’s government has tried to draw a line under the scandal by paying compensation to those that agree not to bring lawsuits against manufacturers.

An official at an overseas grant-making organization, who requested anonymity, says informal agreements with tax authorities on giving money to Chinese recipients may now be in doubt. But he and others in the NGO field say it’s too soon to say if a broader crackdown is underway and, if so, whether foreign funding would be squeezed.

State projects get outside aid, too

On the day of his arrest, Xu was due to prepare his defense in the tax case. The next day, a municipal tax bureau found against OCI, which had argued that the money from Yale and another private donor had already been declared.

Jeffrey Prescott, deputy director of Yale’s China Law Center, says he was disturbed by the detention of Xu, a former visiting scholar at Yale, and its implications for lawyers working with marginalized groups. He says Yale also supported government-run programs in China, including research on legal reform with state universities.

“Obviously these issues can be sensitive in China. But if you look at what [OCI] is doing, it’s pretty mainstream public interest law,” he says.

7월 14일 북경 국가 세무국, 지방세무국이 2개월을 거쳐 회계감사를 한 끝에 ‘공맹자문유한책임공사’가 24만 위안을 탈세한 사실을 확인하고, 142만 위안의 벌금형을 선고했다. 관련 법률에 따르면, 탈세 행위는 50%에서 5배까지 벌금을 집행할 수 있다. 이에, 세무국은 벌금 최고형인 5배의 벌금을 집행한 것이다.

이 매체는 그냥 일반적인 탈세 사건이 아니라, 처벌 대상이 비영리기구라는 점에 주목했다. 공맹(공맹자문유한책임공사)은 2005년 설립되었고, 법률을 연구하고 시민의 권리 수호를 위해 사건 무료 변호를 담당하는 NGO단체이다.

이 매체는 공맹이 단체의 관리 특히 재무와 세무관련 문제를 처리하는데 소홀했다는 점을 지적했다. 오랫동안 자금량이 많지 않았지만, 회사를 관리하는 전문적인 재무 직원이나, 재무, 회계 감사도 없었으며, 자발적으로 납세하지 않은 것.

하지만, 공맹의 사업 내용을 볼 때 공맹은 납세하지 않아도 될 뿐 아니라 중국 정부는 세금으로 공맹을 지지하는 것이 마땅하다며 매체는 전했다.

▲‘공맹 사건’의 근본 원인과 중국 풀뿌리 NGO의 암담한 현실

이 매체는 ‘공맹 사건’의 근원을 비영리기구가 기업 형태로 생존하는 난처한 현실에 있다고 보았다.

이중관리제도로 민정부에 등록 어려워 기업의 형태로 공상부에 등록

관련정책의 규정에 의하면, 중국은 비영리단체에 대해 이중관리제도를 시행하고 있다. 민정부는 등록기관이고, 업무주관기구는 NGO관련 업무를 주관한다. 따라서 NGO단체가 민정부문에 사회단체나 민간 비기업단위(비영리성 사회서비스 기관)로 등록하려면, 위탁 관리할 주관 단위를 찾아야 하는데, 현실적으로 풀뿌리 단체를 받아주는 곳은 거의 없다고 한다. 이 때문에 민정부에 등록된 70%가 부녀자연합회, 장애인연합회, 청소년발전기금회 등 정부가 배후로 있는 준정부 기구, 준민간 기구이다.

이 매체는 이러한 정책으로 말미암아 정부를 배경으로 하지 않는 풀뿌리NGO나 공상부문에 등록하는 단체는 ‘기업’이 되거나 아예 등록 자체를 하지 않는다고 지적했다.

한 연구에서 중국의 NGO가 300만 개에 달한다고 했지만, 작년 말까지 민정부문에 등록된 민간단체는 40만 밖에 되지 않는다고 한다. 이는 절대다수의 비영리기구가 ‘편제 밖’에 존재하는 것을 의미하는데, 공맹 역시 이런 배경으로 공상부에 등록한 것이다.

정체성 혼란, 프로젝트 진행의 어려움, 법적 보호 받지 못함

이 매체는 기업의 형태로 생존하는 비영리단체는 공맹만이 아니라고 지적하며 많은 사람에게 알려진 NGO단체들을 상대로한 인터뷰 내용도 보도했다.

중국 최초의 풀뿌리NGO 중의 하나인, ‘홍풍센터(여성 상담 서비스를 제공)’ 역시 여성의 권익을 위해 많은 일을 하고 있지만, 비영리기구인 단체임에도, 영리 기업으로 등록되어 있어 항상 정체성에 혼란을 느낀다고 밝혔다. 또한, 법적신분이 비영리기구가 아니므로 해외NGO단체로부터 원조를 받거나, 해외NGO단체에 프로젝트를 신청해도 자금이 직접적으로 홍풍센터의 통장으로 들어올 수 없다고 한다.

‘농가부녀자문화발전센터’의 설립자는 자신의 단체가 등록 시에 사용한 주식회사 헌장과 NGO발전모델이 제정한 헌장을 갖고 있는데, 전자는 명의상이지만 법적 효력이 있고, 후자는 실제 운영에 쓰이지만 법적인 보호를 받을 수 없다고 밝혔다.

NGO업계는 공맹에 대한 처벌은 잘못된 것이고, 그들이 받은 기부금은 사업 소득이 아니므로 납세할 필요가 없다는 입장을 취하고 있다고 매체는 전했다. 현행 세법에 의하면, 공상부문에 등록한 기업은 그것이 설사 기부금이라 해도 기업의 소득으로 본다. 그러나 실제로 이런 NGO단체들이 받은 기부금은 프로젝트를 수행하는 데 쓰이며, 이 돈을 세금으로 낼 필요가 없다는 것이다.

이 매체는 이 같은 이중관리제도 때문에 NGO단체들은 자신의 단체가 민정부에 등록될 날만을 기다리며 속을 태우고 있다고 전했다.

*출처: http://www.gongyishibao.com/news/

<인포 뉴스> 김민조 기자
]]> http://tearfultumen.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/inpo-news-%ec%a4%91%ea%b5%ad%ec%9d%98-%ed%92%80%eb%bf%8c%eb%a6%acngo%eb%a1%9c-%ec%82%b0%eb%8b%a4%eb%8a%94-%ea%b2%83/feed/ 0 tearfultumen http://tearfultumen.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/cdt-activists-cheer-china%e2%80%99s-plan-to-move-refinery/ http://tearfultumen.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/cdt-activists-cheer-china%e2%80%99s-plan-to-move-refinery/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:43:40 +0000 tearfultumen http://tearfultumen.wordpress.com/?p=45 ]]> Activists Cheer China’s Plan to Move Refinery

After years of steady pressure, environmental activists in Guandong have been successful in convincing the Chinese government to change the location of the proposed five billion dollar Sinopec-Kuwait Petroleum oil refinery from Nansha in the Pearl River Delta to an undisclosed region:

“The decision by the government shows that they do consider the opinions from different stakeholders across the region, which is a positive sign,” said Edward Chan, a Greenpeace campaign manager based in Hong Kong.

In recent years, Chinese citizens have scored some victories over local governments, which have shelved or delayed projects after vocal opposition about pollution and environmental worries.

These include a paraxylene chemical plant in the city of Xiamen that was scrapped on toxicity concerns and a delay over a planned hydroelectric power dam on the Nu river in Yunnan province.

Other environmentalists question if the decision to move the refinery was really a success, as the refinery may be built in a region with a less powerful, organized and watchful environmental movement.

See also the March 2009 CDT post “Notice Banning Discussion of Guangdong Nansha Oil Project Environmental Impact Report.”

(http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/08/activists-cheer-chinas-plan-to-move-refinery/)

By Duncan Hewitt | NEWSWEEK
Published Aug 1, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Aug 17, 2009

China, a place once synonymous with concubines and bound feet, has for decades prided itself on being a nation that bars all forms of sexual discrimination. That’s made the recent headlines especially jarring. Last month, five local officials in southwestern Guizhou were jailed for forcing underage rural girls into the sex trade; the fact that the men were initially charged with “having sex with underage prostitutes” added to the public outrage. Then there was the case of the two schoolgirls accused by police in the southern city of Kunming of working as prostitutes—even after hospital tests proved they were both still virgins. Or the one in May, when Deng Yujiao drew national attention after she was arrested for stabbing to death a local government official who she said had tried to rape her. Plans to charge the 21-year-old waitress with murder provoked a huge outcry in the media and online, leading to a rare government retreat: rather than murder, Deng was convicted of using excessive force in self-defense and then released (on grounds of diminished responsibility).

These incidents have struck a powerful chord among ordinary citizens because of what they reveal about the status of women in China. While Beijing has officially promoted gender equality ever since Chairman Mao proclaimed that women “hold up half the sky,” implementation of this ideal has proved patchy. In its early decades, the Chinese Communist Party did make significant improvements in women’s lives—-granting them the right to divorce and to work on an equal footing with men, and offering greater educational opportunities than those found in most other developing countries.

Since the beginning of China’s great economic opening in the 1980s, however, there’s been some serious backsliding. Many Chinese women—especially the wealthy elites—do live the kinds of lives once unimaginable here, enjoying good education, working for multinationals, and owning their own homes. But millions of their sisters, especially among the poor, have yet to see much change. And there’s been a resurgence of many of the old attitudes and types of exploitation that the Communist Party sought to stamp out.

Perhaps the starkest example is the boom in the sex trade. The government abolished prostitution in the 1950s and worked to rehabilitate former escorts—one of its proudest accomplishments. Yet today, massage parlors, hair salons, and other venues offering sex for money have become ubiquitous, and some estimates put the number of prostitutes in China at 4 million.

Such growth reveals how China’s market economy has in some ways contributed to the exploitation of women, even as it has created new opportunities for others. Since the 1980s, rural women have enjoyed the freedom to move to urban areas to seek work. But that has produced a large urban underclass, who often find they have no way to make money but to sell themselves—a dilemma likely to grow more common today thanks to the global economic crisis.

The problems go far beyond prostitution. According to Sun Zhongxin, a sociologist specializing in Chinese women’s studies at Tufts, capitalism has created a tendency “to treat women as a commodity” throughout China’s poorly regulated labor market. “For example, lots of job advertisements now say, ‘Seeking a woman, with good features, over 1.6 meters tall.’ If you’re a woman but you’re not pretty, companies may not [hire] you.”

Reports of on-the-job discrimination have become commonplace. In a society where state-run enterprises and work units once provided free day care to ensure that mothers could keep working, resistance to hiring women of childbearing age has become widespread. Prof. Jiang Jin, a specialist in women’s history at Shanghai’s East China Normal University (ECNU), says, “It’s harder for women graduates to find jobs than male graduates because of the childbirth issue. Personal quality still matters, but the less-competitive females will face more difficulties.” The situation is particularly bad, Jiang says, at the millions of small private businesses. In China’s civil service and its remaining large state enterprises, according to Jiang, socialist-era egalitarian attitudes are stronger. But at small outfits, bosses are often “not that well educated about gender equality,” she says. And even government workers are not immune. Feng Dongyan, a young Shanghai office worker, recalls applying for a job in a state-run bank and being told by a staff member that “they applied looser standards to male applicants. So out of 100 posts they appointed 80 men,” she says.

While there are some signs of progress—50 percent of university or college students in China today are women, up from 23 percent in 1980—the gaps are still huge. The nation’s leading headhunter, Chinahr.com, reported in 2007 that the average salary for white-collar men was 44,000 yuan ($6,441), compared with 28,700 yuan ($4,201) for women. Even some women who have done well in business complain that a glass ceiling limits their chances of promotion. A recent Grant Thornton survey found that only 30 percent of senior managers in China’s private enterprises are female.

Part of the problem lies in poor regulation. “China’s Constitution emphasizes that men and women are equal,” says Tufts’s Sun, “but if you really try to go and implement it, it’s very difficult—our laws are not very specific, or they’re too weak.” If you go to court, says Li Ying of the Women’s Center for Legal Aid at Peking University, “it’s very hard to prove that you’ve been discriminated against because of your gender.”

Sun argues that even during the supposed feminist heyday of the ’50s and ’60s there were problems. China did accomplish “a great deal,” she says, but “it was never 100 percent: for example, we said women should work, but in many state enterprises they did cleaning or manual labor.” These practices continue today and are reflected in China’s political sector: despite a few success stories, women make up around 20 percent of the Communist Party’s 70 million members and hold only 13 of 204 seats on the Central Committee, the party’s top body.

Signs of patriarchal attitudes abound, down to details like the tendency of male customers in restaurants to click their fingers at female staff and address them as “xiao mei”—meaning “little sister” or “little girl.” Experts say these kind of attitudes also help explain the prevalence of domestic violence, which Li of Peking University says may affect 30 percent of all families. Biases are also reinforced by policies like the one that allows rural families to have a second child if their first is a girl (on the assumption that daughters are less useful to poor farmers).

In recent years, the government has attempted to tackle the gender problem. Last year, for example, it launched a high-profile campaign against domestic violence, and in 2005 it introduced new laws against sexual harassment, though the definition remains vague.

Perhaps more significantly, some Chinese citizens are taking matters into their own hands. In a number of big cities, women-run nongovernmental organizations now provide training and information to migrants to help them avoid falling into the trap of prostitution. The Internet has also helped Chinese women to organize. “It’s had a big impact in filling in the gaps—you can find information about discrimination,” says Sun. Internet activism has been particularly noticeable in recent months: much of the publicity surrounding the case of the Kunming schoolgirls was generated by the blog posts of Wu Hongfei, a well-known rock singer and journalist. And the truth about Deng Yujiao, the waitress who stabbed a Hubei official to death, was revealed only after Wu Gan, another blogger, visited her in the hospital after her arrest—and found her strapped to a bed. His photos, posted online, helped spark public outrage.

These episodes may be a sign that, as Chinese society becomes more affluent and better educated, concern about the rights of women is increasing. “The young generation who’ve grown up in the cities with a good education have much more of a sense of individual legal rights,” says Jiang of ECNU. Wu, who also tried to help the families involved in the Kunming case, emphasizes, “If society doesn’t provide a fair environment and guarantee legal safeguards, then anyone can become a victim.” That thinking was on full display during the Deng case, when activists in Beijing and Wuhan staged street demonstrations in which bound and gagged women carried placards that asked, who is the next deng yujiao?

Although the government reversed itself in that case, so far most official reactions to women’s activism have been decidedly cool. Jiang says most people in China “don’t feel any urgency—there’s so much we need to reform, and the gender issue seems not the one people are most concerned about.” Other activists complain that it’s still more or less taboo to describe oneself as a feminist in China. And many successful urban women seem to feel little solidarity with their rural counterparts. Still, the recent scandals—and the big public reaction to them—may mark a turning point. Sun notes that Chinese universities began creating women’s-studies centers and courses only in 1995. Today these programs are commonplace, she says, and are starting to have an impact. More and more young people, she suggests, “are sensitive about discrimination.” Her students already work in elite jobs in media, government, multinational companies, and NGOs, and they get women’s issues. It may not be long before more of their fellow citizens start to get the message, too.

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By D’Arcy Doran (AFP) – 2 days ago

SHANGHAI — Analysts say recent media attention reflects a struggle between demographers alarmed by a shrinking workforce and ageing population and officials clinging to the mindset that China has too many people.

Shanghai nurse Lu Ming wants a second baby but it is not China’s one-child policy that is holding her back.

If anything, she is being encouraged to increase the size of her family as the city faces the challenge of providing for its ageing population.

Last week it reminded couples such as Lu and her husband — both of whom are only children because of the policy — that they are eligible to have a second child.

Comments by Shanghai family planning director Xie Lingli published on the front page of the government-run China Daily were initially seen as a signal that the controversial one-child policy was about to be relaxed after 30 years.

However, days later a report by China’s official Xinhua news agency quoted Xie as saying she was simply stating rules that had been in place for years and that Shanghai never pursued measures that parted from national policies.

Yet for young university-educated mothers such as Lu, who said she was aware of the policy exceptions for having a second child, government officials’ words alone mean little in the face of the rising costs of raising a bigger family.

“I had one child and now I want to have a second one,” the 31-year-old said.

“But not every family can afford to have a second child,” she added.

“To raise a second child you have to take all the financial costs into consideration, otherwise it’s not responsible.”

“The fact this caused such a media storm shows the wind is blowing the other way and it’s about time,” said Wang Feng, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine.

“It’s a monumental decision that China has to face: what to do about a policy that came out as an emergency measure and was supposed to last for only a generation,” Wang said.

Regardless of whether China decides to phase out the one-child policy, population decline is inevitable after more than 15 years of fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1, Wang said.

The government has yet to understand that young career-minded women and rising living costs signal demographic trends similar to those in Western Europe, and birth rates will fall even further, Wang said.

“China needs to realise there is a demographic crisis quickly in order to prevent it from deepening,” he said.

Even though the rules for having a second child are not new, by publicly encouraging people to take advantage of them Shanghai officials may be trying to counter propaganda tilted towards encouraging only one child, he said.

“Having a second child is often portrayed as if it’s a sign of backwardness and not contributing to the country’s goal of controlling population growth,” Wang said.

A senior Shanghai district family planning official insisted that encouraging eligible couples to have a second child had been going on for nearly five years since new exceptions to the one-child policy were introduced.

Couples are asked a series of questions when they register to marry to determine if they can have more than one child, the official said, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

She provided a bright booklet distributed in Shanghai since 2005 which spells out who is eligible to have a second baby, with children’s book-style illustrations showing a young father with two children hanging off his arms.

Conditions include one of the couple being disabled, one working on a fishing boat at sea for five years, and one being an only child from a rural household.

Urban couples who do not meet the criteria but have a second child nonetheless, are fined the equivalent of three times the per capita income in their city, the booklet said.

The fine for a Shanghai couple, based on 2008 figures, would be about 80,000 yuan (11,800 dollars) — a price wealthy families are often willing to pay.

But in a Shanghai park bouncing her six-month-old grandson on her knee, 51-year-old Huang Yuanxiang said that, for most of the younger generation, the biggest barrier to having more than one child is economic.

For her grandson to prosper, he will have to go to good schools that cost money.

“In my generation, none of us was rich and things were not expensive so it cost little to have more than one child,” she said. “We didn’t face the same financial burden as they do.”

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Many Chinese couples are restricted to just one child

Authorities in China have highlighted inadequate knowledge of contraception and poor sex education as major factors in the high number of abortions there.

There are 13 million abortions each year, compared to 20 million births, according to newly published research.

Researchers believe the real figure could be even higher because there are many abortions at unregistered clinics.

Other countries have higher rates. They include Russia – which some years has more terminations than births.

‘More sex education’

The abortion figures were published in the China Daily newspaper.

Other Chinese media outlets have published similar figures, although it was not immediately clear when the research was carried out.

China imposed strict family planning rules in the 1970s in an attempt to limit the growth of its population.

But young single women are most likely to have abortions in a country where there are 20 million births each year, the research found.

In its front-page story, China Daily said the high number of abortions was “cause for concern”, adding that many women who have abortions are single and aged between 20 and 29.

“Sex education needs to be strengthened, with universities and our society giving more guidance,” Li Ying, a professor at Peking University, told the newspaper.

An official from China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission told the newspaper that most sex education was directed at married couples.

Another official at the commission said the figure of 13 million was based on its own research and on information gathered from hospitals over the last few years.

Although the number is high, China’s abortion rate of 24 per 1,000 woman of childbearing age, as the rate is usually calculated, is far from the top of the international list.

According to UN figures, Russia is highest with more than 50. The US has 15 and Spain just under 12.

China began restricting the number of children each couple can have in 1978. Officials say this has prevented 400 million extra births.

In many cases women are restricted to just one child, although in rural areas some couples can have two children if the first is a girl.

These rules mean abortions are used in some places to ensure the population growth is kept low.

Some women even complain that they are pressured into terminating their pregnancies.