Selective abortion in favor of males has left China with 32 million more boys than girls, creating an imbalance that will endure for decades, an investigation released yesterday warned.
The probe provides ammunition for those experts who predict China’s obsession with a male heir will sow a bitter fruit as men facing a life of bachelorhood fight for a bride.
“Although some imaginative and extreme solutions have been suggested, nothing can be done now to prevent this imminent generation of excess men,” says the paper, published online by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
In most countries, males slightly outnumber females — between 103 and 107 male births for every 100 female births.
But in China and other Asian countries, the sex ratio has widened sharply as the traditional preference for boys is reinforced by the availability of cheap ultrasound diagnostics and abortion.
This has enabled Chinese couples to use pregnancy termination to prevent a female birth, a practice that is officially condemned as well as illegal.
In China, an additional factor has been the “one-child” policy.
In general, parents who have a second child are liable to pay a fine and contribute disproportionately towards the child’s education.
But in some provinces, a second child is permitted if the first is a girl or if parents are experiencing “hardship.” And in a few others, couples are allowed a second child and sometimes a third, regardless of sex.
In the paper, Zhejiang university professors Wei Xing Zhu and Li Lu and Therese Hesketh of University College London found that in 2005 alone, China had more than 1.1 million excess male births.
Among Chinese aged below 20, the greatest gender imbalances were among one-to-four-year-olds, where there were 124 male to 100 female births, with 126 to 100 in rural areas, they found.
The gap was especially big in provinces where the one-child policy was strictly enforced and also in rural areas. Jiangxi and Henan Provinces had ratios of over 140 male births compared to female births in the 1-4 age group.
Among second births, the sex ratio was even higher, at 143 males to 100 female. It peaked at a massive 192 boys to 100 girls in Jiangsu Province.
Only two provinces — Tibet and Xinjiang, the most permissive in terms of the one-child policy — had normal sex ratios.
“Sex selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males,” the paper said. “Enforcing the existing ban on sex selective abortion could lead to normalisation of ratios.”
Other policy options are to loosen enforcement of the one-child policy so that couples can have a second child if the first child is a girl, it said.
The paper does not deal with the social consequences of the extraordinary imbalance, but suggests there are rays of light.
Since since 2000, the government has launched policies aimed at countering the imbalance, with a “care for girls” awareness campaign and reforms of inheritance laws, it says.
Partially as a result, the sex ratio of birth did not change between 2000 and 2005, and in many urban areas, the ratio for the first and usually only birth is now within normal limits. The figures come from a mini-census in China in 2005, covering one percent of the population, that sought to rectify flaws in a 2000 census. A total of 4.764 million people under the age of 20 were included in the study.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in