Chinese director pays €1m fine for breach of one-child policy

Film director Zhang Yimou has paid a fine of nearly ¤1 million for fathering more children than permitted, Chinese family planning authorities said on Friday after weeks of speculation about exactly how many children he had fathered.

Zhang, who is probably China’s best known film director internationally, and his wife Chen Ting, admitted she gave birth to two sons and one daughter in 2001, 2004 and 2006, respectively, before they officially got married in 2011. He also has a daughter with a previous partner.

"At midday on February 7th, the Binhu district population and family planning bureau received 7,487,854 yuan (€909,000) from Chen Ting and Zhang Yimou for their additional birth fee and social upbringing fee," the propaganda department in the Binhu district of Wuxi city, in eastern China, wrote on its website.

“With the payment, Chen Ting and Zhang Yimou fulfilled the requirements ...­ and the Wuxi City Binhu district has turned this money over to the national treasury,” the department said.

Zhang has just finished shooting his latest movie, Coming Home, in Beijing and Tianjin with his former muse Gong Li.

Some reports said Zhang had fathered as many as seven children from his two marriages and from relationships with other women in violation of the one child policy.

In recent months, Beijing has begun to slowly ease the one child policy as part of a reform package to allow couples where either parent has no siblings to have two children. The policy was imposed more than three decades ago to prevent overpopulation in the world’s most populous nation.

China is facing major demographic hurdles, as the population ages quickly and the labour force starts to shrink. Strict enforcement of the rules, including forced abortions and sterilisations, have also made the policy very unpopular.

Family planning officials say the reform will lead to two million additional births a year, raising the total number of annual births from 7 million to 9 million. The birth rate has fallen to about 1.5 since the 1990s, well below the need to keep the population steady.

Over the course of his career, the director has gone from being a banned director of art house fare, such as his debut film as director, Red Sorghum, to nationalist epics, such as Hero, which secured his rehabilitation.

He further endeared himself to the authorities with his choreography for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games opening ceremony.