A total of 11 officials and staff at a local family planning station in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were fined after an investigation found a couple who had given birth to 15 children.
During the investigation, authorities learned about a man named Liang Er, 76, and his “wife,” Lu Honglan, 46, who gave birth to four boys and 11 girls between 1995 and 2016.
After the discovery, a total of 11 officials and employees, including the head of Licun Town in Rong County and the director of the local family planning station, were fined for neglecting their duties, local authorities said on Sunday.
The couple could have been fined if discovered before the end of China’s one-child policy, an effort instituted by the Chinese government in 1979 to control the growing population and limit resource needs.
The decades-long policy has since been defunct, having finally changed to a two-child policy in 2015. The government finally decided to lift the cap and the penalties that came with it, including heavy fines and job loss, on July 21, 2021.
The couple, who reportedly met and fell in love while working in Guangdon in 1994, had an informal wedding ceremony but their marriage was never legally registered. The family reportedly survived on Liang’s income from collecting pine sap and government-provided poverty subsidies between 2015 and 2019.
Liang and Lu’s life made headlines in 2016 when the man earned the nickname “Macho Man” for marrying a woman 30 years his junior and having many children. His wife also reportedly gave birth to most of their children in their home.
After the Ministry of Public Security launched an anti-trafficking campaign earlier this month, media attention once again focused on the couple from Rong County in Guangxi. The campaign was launched after the wide dissemination earlier this year of another case, in which another of eight people were found chained in Huankou Village, in Feng County, eastern Jiangsu Province.
Image 中國見聞秒评PLUS
The story goes on
Do you like this content? Read more from NextShark!
Asian-American father walking in stroller with 1-year-old son repeatedly hit in SF
Gemma Chan, Susie Lau call out British newspaper for ‘trivializing’ Prince Philip’s ‘casual racism’
Asian woman spits and gets hair pulled out in Manhattan after being blamed for coronavirus
Scientists discover new ‘Godzilla wasp’ hunting underwater in Japan