Top Chinese filmmaker broke one-child law: govt
Beijing (AFP) - One of China's top film directors violated family planning laws by having three children, authorities said, urging him and his wife to declare their income and accept a fine that could run into millions of dollars.
Zhang Yimou, the maker of "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Red Sorghum", admitted through his studio that he has two sons and a daughter with his current wife, apologising after months of speculation he broke China's controversial family planning laws.
Zhang, 62, who directed the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, also has another daughter with his ex-wife.
His children with current wife Chen Ting were all born before the couple married in 2011 and without approval from local family planning authorities, said the ruling Communist Party's propaganda office in Binghu in the eastern city of Wuxi.
Wuxi is where Chen is registered as living.
"An investigation has found that Zhang Yimou and Chen Ting violated the law to give birth," the agency said in a statement on its verified account on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
"We hope the litigants... will faithfully report their income during the relevant years so that we can come up with a penalty according to the law and publish the result to society in a timely manner," it said.
Some Chinese media reports have speculated the penalty could be as high as 160 million yuan ($26 million), but the authorities did not give any figures.
A Wuxi newspaper said Tuesday that according to provincial regulations the fine for the first child, a son, will be three times the couple's joint income in 2000, the year before he was born.
The penalty for the other two children will be five to eight times the average Wuxi resident's disposable annual income, plus an unspecified multiple of the couple's combined income for the corresponding years, the Jiangnan Evening News added.
China has implemented its family planning law for over 30 years, which currently restricts most parents to one child, with exceptions including some rural families whose first child is a girl, ethnic minorities, and couples who are both only children.
It has been at times brutally enforced, say rights groups, while officials say it has been a key element of China's rising prosperity.
The party said last month it would relax the regulations by allowing couples to have two children if one of the parents is an only child.
Many of Zhang's early films were banned in China, but he has since become close to authorities, and 2008 he was chosen by the government to direct the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics.
His most recent work, 2011's "The Flowers of War", starred Christian Bale and was a historical drama set during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.
