No Mandate for Sterilization in Tibet: Official

The government of the Tibet Autonomous Region in southwest China has never infringed upon or restrained women's rights to give birth, said the director of the Regional Family Planning Commission Tuesday.

"Tibet has no policy that sets a quota for the number of children Tibetan women may have, nor does it force women to have abortions or undergo sterilization procedures," Purbu Zhoima said in an interview.

Responding to a recent distorted report in the overseas media about Tibet's family planning policy, Purbu Zhoima said, "It is ridiculous for the media to say that Tibet has a policy to force women to abort or to be sterilized."

Of course, the government advocates a birth control policy in Tibet, but there are different rules for different groups of people, she pointed out.

Under the existing family planning policy in Tibet, married couples of the Han nationality who are officials or employed in Tibet should follow the one-child policy. Tibetan officials and employees are encouraged to bear and rear fewer children; two-child families are regarded as standard in cities.

There is no family planning policy for Tibetan herdsmen, she said.

However, she said, more and more Tibetan women in the countryside now choose to have two or three children, while the educated women prefer having one child.

There are some changes in the concept of having children among Tibetan women, she said, adding that Tibetan people now appreciate the regulations for birth and fertility.

Dixing, a 45-year-old women in the rural area of Nedong County of Shannan Prefecture, has 11 children. She said that the burden caused by such a large family is nearly unbearable.

Yang Zhin, a 25-year-old official with the Lhasa City Taxation Bureau, said, "As a Tibetan, I enjoy the right to have more children than the Han people, but I am reluctant to have more than one or two children in the future as I want to improve the quality of my life."

An official of the State Family Planning Commission in Beijing said the family planning policy is also expected to be carried out among the ethnic people, but the birth policy for them is more lenient than that for the Han people.

The ethnic people living in frontier regions and the areas with harsh natural conditions can have three or more children, he said.

According to 1998 statistics, there are 514,200 married women of childbearing age in Tibet, 36.29 percent of whom have three or more children.

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