BEIJING, Dec 14 (Reuters) - China's growing upper class has the means to trump the one-child policy and simply pay out out to have extra children, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.
A survey had shown that 40 percent of people in the world's most populous country dreamt of having more than one child, Xinhua said, but few could afford to do so because of government-imposed "social maintenance fees" as high as 150,000 yuan ($18,600) per extra child.
Chinese officials credit the one-child policy with avoiding 300 million births, equal to the population of Europe, over 30 years, though the country's population has continued to grow.
The restrictions have also bolstered a traditional preference for baby boys and came under fire from western countries and human rights activists.
"Although many people cherish the dream of having more than one child, only a handful of the new rich can make the dream come true," Zhang Yi, a researcher with the Institute of Population and Labour Economy under the China Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted as saying.
Zhang called the social maintenance fee "a passport for the wealthy to have more children" and called for the fines to be levied in proportion to families' incomes.
China has repeatedly issued warnings over the dramatic and growing divide between the country's haves and have-nots, a preoccupation of Communist leaders struggling to tread a path of balanced economic reforms and social stability.
Earlier this year, the financial hub of Shanghai loosened control on couples having a second child, leading to media speculation that wider reforms of the one-child rule, launched in the early 1980s to curb China's population, could be coming.
But the rich do not have to wait.
"I already have three children and if I had three more I would be financially capable of raising them all," a millionaire businessman surnamed Yu was quoted as saying.
"More children means more choices, from which I will choose the most qualified heir to look after my family property."
Xinhua reported the phenomenon as a new form of keeping up with the Joneses.
"China's 'nouveaux rich' are not only competing with each other to buy grandiose mansions and fast, expensive cars, their latest status symbol is a brood of children," the report said.
"Some wealthy people are even emigrating abroad for the sole purpose of having a second or third child whom they bring back to raise in China." ($1=8.070 Yuan)