Under the one-child policy, local governments applied a yi piao fojue, a one-vote veto, to family planning. Zhejiang’s measures of April 2007 applied it to any department or unit “in which a birth occurs that violates the laws and regulations on population and family planning.” A vetoed unit lost the right to compete for general honors and titles for that year and the next.
A 1998 article in the journal Population and Economics described a case from 1995. Wencheng town had concealed and falsely reported its figures, and the county vetoed the town’s whole family planning work. Village cadres who had under-reported lost the right to be considered for awards, and their year-end bonuses were deducted.