Yangtze Briefing | How should Jiangsu officials punish scrap collector who had 10 children?

In a nation famous for its strictly enforced one-child policy, the case of a Jiangsu scrap collector who had 10 children presents authorities with a problem.

Officials are unsure how to punish Liu Xiangming, because, as one official admitted, "no matter how much he is fined, he won't be able to afford it".

Liu's punishment could come to hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of yuan. But the financial penalty would be meaningless for a man long trapped in poverty.

Liu, 58, makes a living collecting rubbish in the suburbs of Suzhou . He has not returned to his hometown of Pizhou in Jiangsu, about 500km away, for 18 years, the Beijing Times reported the man as saying.

Liu's 10 children - four boys and six girls - were aged between two months and 21 years old. The family had lived quietly until local media recently reported the seventh child, a five-year-old boy, had accidentally drowned in a pond near their home.

The couple's first child was born in Pizhou and the rest in Suzhou after they left in the hopes of earning more money elsewhere. The scrap collector said he helped deliver the babies in shacks he rented, using a piece of broken ceramic bowl disinfected with alcohol to cut the umbilical cords.

Only the first child has permanent residency documents, known as hukou. The births of the others were not approved by authorities. None has received much education.