A propaganda campaign in the state media over the past few weeks has amounted to an admission by officials that newly prosperous Chinese couples are exploiting a loophole in the law to produce several babies at once.

It came after increasing evidence, highlighted in testimony by a senior Bush administration official to the US Congress, that the one-child policy is breaking down.

There was no provision for sanctions against multiple pregnancies under the original regulations imposed in 1979 when few, if any, Chinese had access to fertility drugs. Now those who can afford it cheat the system — an example of how economic change has outpaced Communist party regulations.

The trade in expensive, imported fertility drugs and preparations based on Chinese traditional medicine is booming in the southern provinces adjoining Hong Kong, where household incomes have been rising by 15% a year.

The pills and potions, once used only to assist a small number of women undergoing in vitro fertilisation, are now being taken by healthy women who are able to have normal pregnancies but simply want more children.

“We have many customers for the local brand but also plenty willing to pay 700 yuan (£46) for the imported medicine,” said a chemist in the border city of Shenzhen. The cost of one dose equals a monthly wage for a factory worker.

The results, according to a report in the newspaper Information Times, have been dramatic. An obstetrician at the Guangzhou Women and Children’s hospital, identified only as Dr Han, said the numbers of twins had almost doubled compared with two years ago. “I’ve been questioned by many women about fertility drugs, about whether they work or not and if there are any side effects,” he said.

In Changsha, capital of Hunan province, which is comparatively poor, more than 50 pairs of twins or triplets have already been born at the city’s Yaxiang hospital this year, compared with about 25 in the whole of of 2004, according to another newspaper, Southern Weekend. And in the northern province of Heilongjiang, doctors reported seven pairs of twins born in the last quarter of 2004 at one city hospital. Previously the average was about seven a year.

Similar reports from hospitals across China have prompted a stern rebuke from bureaucrats at the Ministry of Health, which recently ordered hospitals not to prescribe the drugs to women who did not require them on grounds of infertility. And, right on cue, a barrage of horror stories has appeared in the state media to convince couples not to take the risk.

The news agency Xinhua warned readers that “according to some surveys” taking fertility drugs was highly dangerous. The Yangcheng Evening News told readers of a woman in Guangzhou who took fertility pills but instead of getting pregnant suffered dizziness and vomiting. Her doctor warned her she could be sterilised as a penalty for taking the medicine.

Few Chinese appear to be paying attention, however, and the authorities are now reconsidering the rules and punishments associated with the one-child policy.

Arthur Dewey, the Bush administration’s senior envoy to China on population issues, told the US Congress on December 14 that the system was breaking down.

“The Chinese government, in our view, may be beginning to understand that its coercive birth-planning regime has had extremely negative social, economic and human rights effects,” Dewey said.

American officials believe that the Chinese government is worried about the unintended consequences of its one-child edict. The national census of 2000 revealed that 117 boys are born alive in China for every 100 girls — the result of sex- selective abortion to satisfy the traditional demand for sons.

Nonetheless, legislation introduced in 2002 still requires birth control and imposes penalties on married couples who break the rules.

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