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Cross-strait family trends different, says researcher

Family-related trends in China and Taiwan are highly divergent despite the common expectation that the two countries share a major cultural link in family values, a researcher at Academia Sinica said yesterday.

About the only aspect that families on both sides of the strait have in common is that their value systems lend themselves to oppressing women, award-winning economist and former Academia Sinica vice president Cyrus Chu (朱敬一) said.

Presenting a lecture at National Taiwan University (NTU) titled, "The Development of Chinese Families in the Past Half-Century," Chu debunked the popular myth that family structures and values in Taiwan and China constitute an enduring cultural link between the two nations.

He cited China's one-child family policy and its recent turbulent history compared to Taiwan's "smooth" development in the past 50 years for the divergence.

"If you compare ethnically Chinese families in the two major `Chinese' societies of China and Taiwan, there are, of course, cultural differences. The two societies are undergoing similar changes [in terms of economic development], but where change hasn't occurred as much is in the realm of gender equality," Chu said.

Calling on years of field research, Chu said Taiwanese wives are nine times more likely than their husbands to be responsible for housekeeping.

Although Chinese husbands tend to do more housework, Chinese women are regularly subject to forced sterilization, abortions and intrauterine device (IUD) implants, Chu said.

The researcher added that the concept of preserving one's lineage by trying to sire a son was resurging in China after fading during the Cultural Revolution. This trend contrasts with the steady decline in the professed desire among Taiwanese to preserve their lineage, he said.

Home to the most skewed male-to-female birth ratio in the world due to female infanticide (more than 1.11 males born per every female), China not only lacks females but also "sibling networks" that largely define conventional family structures in Taiwan because of the one-child family policy, Chu said.

Without sibling pressure to maintain contact with one's parents, Chu said, offspring in China are less likely to visit their parents.

In Taiwan, on the other hand, "everyone dreads phone calls from siblings pressuring them to go and see mom and dad," and maintain contact as a result, Chu said.

A recipient of the 2003 Presidential Science Prize, Chu was the youngest Academia Sinica vice president ever before becoming a researcher there, said NTU President Lee Si-chen (李嗣涔), who attended Chu's speech.
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