Nearly 2,000 officials in central China's Hunan Province have been found caught breaking China's strict one-child policy, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

China's family planning policy, implemented in the late 1970s, limits couples to one child to control population growth and conserve natural resources in the world's most populous country.

Xinhua said the provincial family planning commission caught the officials from 2000 to 2005, and that the violators included 21 national and local lawmakers and 24 political advisers.

It said one national lawmaker, identified only by his surname as Li, who had a child with each of his four mistresses.

Xinhua said some of the officials were discovered breaking the family-planning law only when they were being investigated on corruption charges.

China has about 1.3 billion people, 20 percent of the world's total. The government has pledged to keep the population under 1.36 billion in 2010, and under 1.45 billion in 2020.

(Shanghai Daily July 9, 2007)