Adam Minter, Columnist

The Real End of China's One-Child Policy

After operating for decades in the darkness, China's family-planning agencies are about to learn how much harder it is to work out in the open.

April 2, 2014 at 2:01 PM UTC

By Adam Minter

Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of sports. He is the author, most recently, of “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale."

A mother and child in Beijing. Photographer: Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

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In January, superstar Chinese film director Zhang Yimou was fined the equivalent of $1.24 million for having three children in excess of the country’s strict, so-called “one-child” family planning standards. It was a significant, possibly record fine, meant in theory to compensate the state for the social and material costs associated with those pesky, extra three lives.

This raises an interesting question: What happens to Zhang Yimou’s $1.24 million? Or more importantly, what's happened to the estimated 2 trillion yuan ($320 billion) in social maintenance fees that millions of other Chinese parents have paid since 1980, according to one study? On Thursday, a court in Guangzhou ruled that the Family Planning Commission of Guangdong Province -- China’s most populous -- must disclose the specifics of its own data within 15 days.