Beijing hopes to control its population to a
                 ceiling of 1.6 billion people and, for the very first
                 time, it may impose curbs on its ethnic minorities

                 BEIJING -- China said yesterday it would maintain
                 its strict one-child policy to limit its vast population to
                 a peak of 1.6 billion in the middle of century, while
                 hinting at new controls for ethnic minorities.

                 A Communist Party directive said China would keep
                 the average population birth rate under 1.5 per cent
                 per year, and that the country would move to zero
                 growth rate by the middle of the century if the policy
                 was enforced.

                 China hopes to limit its growing population to 1.4
                 billion people in 2010.

                 "The country will continue to encourage marriage and
                 childbearing at later ages and call for one child per
                 couple," said the directive, issued on March 2 and
                 published yesterday by the official Xinhua news
                 agency.

                 It added that "some couples will be allowed to have a
                 second child in accordance with the law". Currently,
                 couples who are both only children are allowed to
                 have two children of their own.

                 The report from the Communist Party's Central
                 Committee and the State Council, or China's Cabinet,
                 also suggested ethnic minorities would for the first
                 time face new controls.

                 "People from ethnic minority groups should also
                 follow the family-planning policy. But the specific
                 regulations for them will be issued by the governments
                 of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities,"
                 the directive said.

                 Since the 1980s, China has enforced its one-child
                 policy, with fines and forced sterilisations for those
                 who break the law but the policy was always more
                 lax for ethnic minorities than for the majority Han
                 Chinese.

                 The London-based Tibet Information Network (TIN)
                 said in February that China had begun clamping
                 restrictions on Tibetans for the first time, ordering
                 some women to have only two children or face
                 sterilisation.

                 China has a total of 55 ethnic minorities, accounting
                 for 110 million people or around 9 per cent of the
                 population.

                 The directive said China's population would stay
                 below 1.4 billion by 2010 and grow by 10 million per
                 year in the next few decades.

                 The policy said that one-child families in the city
                 would receive social security bonuses such as
                 subsidies on retirement, while those in the countryside
                 would get land and other benefits. -- AFP, Xinhua,
                 AP

                      Adapted from The Straits Times, 8 May 2000.