The key to cleaning family planning slogans lies in renewing the administrative concept of some officials, says an editorial in Beijing News. The following is an excerpt:

The National Population and Family Planning Commission recently decided to clean inappropriate slogans and regulate the use of slogans nationwide. It is true that inappropriate slogans are very common. Many such catch phrases go against the human-oriented principle and are peremptory or coercive.

It is undeniable that slogans have played an important role in spreading the country's population and family planning policies as well as scientific knowledge of reproductive health, promote the implementation of the national policy and create a fine population environment in the past many years. But the negative impact brought up by some slogans cannot be underestimated.

Those slogans that show little concern for public feelings have become a common enemy harming social harmony.

Of course slogan pollution does not stop in the field of population and family planning. Incorrect logic and concepts are plaguing the slogans.

A nation's spirits are not only represented in books but also on the walls in the streets. There are still many slogans that are humiliating our time. Slogans should be the vehicles to express social rights and values of our time.

But some government departments regard slogans as vehicles to convey their own power awareness and regard the public as the objects for their control. In the thought of some officials, their administrative power is higher than the public and the laws.

To clean the slogan pollution needs active participation of all government departments and the whole society. At the same time, we should realize the power implication behind the slogans and clean the old administrative concept of some officials.

(China Daily August 7, 2007)