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Video from a cell phone showed the aftermath of riots in a poor region of southern China in protest against the notorious one-child policy that the People's Republic has been enforcing since 1980. NBC's Mark Mullen showed the "burned cars and vandalized government property." It turns out that many families are able to keep a second child by agreeing to pay fines for violating the one-child rule. When those fines were suddenly increased to $1,400, riots ensued.
Mullen explained that the source of the friction is China's new affluence, with its upper-class families paying fines as high as $87,000 for a second child and then having a third child as well. In response to the protests, the government promised a "uniform crackdown," a phrase Mullen decoded for us. When officials say "they have the ability to evaluate every situation on a case by case basis" that means "they can up the fine--and continue to up it on an affluent couple--until they finally get their message across."
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