People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces deployed against Taiwan could be benefiting from Beijing’s one child policy.
That charge was made by Chai Ling (柴玲), a former student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Chai told the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs that this was an “alarming” development.
Chai testified at a hearing on human rights in China that as a result of the one child policy, families were aborting female fetuses in favor of boys.
This left a large population of unmarried men unable to find wives because of a shortage of women, she said.
“It is an alarming trend which we suspect the [Chinese] government does not want to end,” Chai said.
She said that Beijing actually sees the surplus as an asset in terms of military expansion as it moves to “fulfill nationalist ambitions and use military force to take over Taiwan.”
Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen agreed, saying: “Yes, that’s true.”
The allegation comes as the latest 10-year census from Taiwan revealed that for the first time ever the nation now has more women than men.
According to the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, for every 100 women in Taiwan there are now 99.6 men, compared with 104.2 men for every 100 women a decade ago.
Official figures in China put the current ratio at 118 baby boys born for every 100 girls.
Ros-Lehtinen blasted the Chinese regime’s “abysmal human rights record.”
“Responsible nations must demand that China end its brutal human rights abuses, including the unspeakable forced abortion policy, and we must support those in China standing up for their rights and for democracy,” she said.
“Population statistics indicate a growing gender imbalance in China, with a lack of female children and young women of marriageable age due to the coercive one child policy and Confucian preference for male children,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “Many have termed the selective abortion of female fetuses as ‘gendercide.’”
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