Feature: Herdsman Content With One Healthy Child

Herdsman Suya Latu lounges against his tractor, enjoying the afternoon sunshine over the grassland of Inner Mongolia. Two new-born lambs compete for the business end of the milk bottle held by Suya's wife Qiqige. His eight-year-old son Audun Batu romps with his dog outside the family's tent, while his flock of sheep graze contentedly nearby.

The 33-year-old Mongolian man told Xinhua in an interview that this bucolic existence is possible because of the 30 ewes provided to him by the local government of Dongwuzhuer Town in Chenbaerhu County. Under an agreement with the local government, all the lambs produced by Suya's ewes are his, and he is allowed to pay lower fees for grassland use.

Since 1997, the Inner Mongolian government has carried out an incentive program to make life easier for herdsmen by offering financial assistance in return for single-child families.

China's family planning policy rules that a couple can only have one child, but minority couples, including those of the Mongolian nationality, may have two or three. Some ethnic groups with population under 100,000 are allowed to have as many children as they wish to guarantee the minority's propagation.

In times past, herdsmen used to have more than one child as a result of the high infant mortality rate in the grassland area. China's 55 minorities account for 8.98 percent of the huge 1.25 billion population. The country's first minority autonomous region of Inner Mongolia is home to 49 minorities who make up 20.57 percent of the total.

Encouraged by the government's generosity and his improved living condition, Suya and Qiqige, like most of their fellow herding families, are choosing to have just one child.

Statistics show that five million more people would have been born in the region in the past three decades if the local authorities had not adopted the family planning policy. The birth rate there in 1999 was 13.32 per thousand, 7.87 per thousand fewer than in 1990. And the country's average birth rate is 16.3 per thousand.

In addition to tending his own flock, the local government is also paying Suya to raise more than 300 sheep -- a situation that suits him, as the cost of raising them is shouldered by the authorities. The herding work has brought Suya's yearly income to nearly 6,000 yuan (723 US dollars), above the local average, he said.

One out of ten families like Suya's in Dongwuzhuer Town has benefited from the program.

Hugging his son, a proud Suya said, "My boy is extremely healthy. I don't see any need for a second son."

Suya and Qiqige take little Batu by tractor or horse to a boarding school in town every Sunday, where the boy studies both in Chinese and Mongolian. He lives there during the schoolweek, and comes home on weekends.

Qiqige wants him to go to university in the region's capital Hohhot or Beijing. "We wouldn't have enough money to do that if we had more children."

Duan Yi, an official with the Hohhot government said that although minorities are allowed to have more children, "we modern Mongolians think that one healthy child is far more important." The 41-year-old Mongolian official has a daughter.

Local government workers, in buses and on horseback, are now distributing pamphlets on birth control and general reproductive health throughout the 880,000-square kilometers of grassland.

People's Daily Online --- http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/english/