Somehow, last Sunday I missed this brief story. On the page, it seems a little too small for its significance.

The One-Child Policy is the Chinese government's response to a crippling overpopulation problem, and it's the reason why there's an international adoption program from China.

Urban couples are allowed to have one child, or else they're assessed a somewhat astronomical "social compensation" fee. Outside of the cities, couples can try for a boy (to do the farm work) if their first child is a girl, so it's really more of a "second-child-IF" policy.

But basically, this one law is the engine behind overseas adoption, the reason why the SWIs are full and, according to some folks in places like Guangxi, the reason why some women are forced to have abortions.

So, as you can imagine, it's disturbing when one hears about violations of the policy being carried out by people in power. Government officials in Hunan have been caught breaking the One-Child Policy. Nearly 2,000 of them, according to that Associated Press report (while Kaiser Network itemizes 1,968 violators).

That's a lot of violators for such a little story. (I mean in terms of space on the page - I imagine it's printed much bigger in the Hunanese psyche.)

There's more detail here, including a reference to one official who had four mistresses, one child each. What's interesting is that these people - who include 21 national and local lawmakers, 24 political advisers, 112 businessmen and 6 "intellectual leaders" - weren't found out because of some big One-Child Policy probe. They were all discovered because of other investigations into corruption, graft and general scalliwaggery.

One wonders what might be discovered if the authorities actually chose to look for violators among the social elite - and, since we're talking about the people who make policy, what that might do to the One-Child Policy in general.