China / 117 boys for every 100 girls
Juliana Liu Reuters, voila!
Tiananmen Square. The government launched an advertising campaign: "Girls are just as good as boys!" Archive photo: Reuters
Beijing. By 2020, 30 to 40 million frustrated singles are expected in China, due to the cultural preference in the country for the birth of male sons. According to Li Weixiong, deputy chairman of the State Advisory Committee for Population Research, there is a serious concern that the phenomenon will increase the phenomena of prostitution and trafficking in women.
Li pointed out that in China a bias has arisen in the relationship between the sex of newborns, because many Chinese couples choose to abort female fetuses - a situation that may encourage crime and create social instability. "This is by no means a wild prediction," he told me in an unusually direct speech, in which he confirmed the extent of the problem created by the one-child policy, the results of which could be a huge population of singles - larger than the entire population of Malaysia.
"The large gap between the birth rate of male and female babies is a serious threat to the construction of a healthy and stable society," Lee said. The gap between the number of men and women is particularly large in rural areas. According to Lee, in 1982 the ratio between the birth of boys and girls was reasonable and stood at 108 boys for every 100 girls, but in 2000, the gap widened to 117 boys for every 100 girls. In the southern provinces of Yinan and Guangdong the ratio is even worse: 130 boys for every 100 girls.
"Such a gap is a serious threat to the normal and balanced growth of the population, and may encourage crime and social problems such as fictitious marriages, kidnapping of women and prostitution," Lee said. Trafficking in women and children has become a national problem in China. According to official data, between the years 2003-2001 the police managed to free about 42 thousand kidnapped women and children. Commentators claim that these figures are only the tip of the iceberg. Many of the abductees were sold for marriage purposes, sexual slavery or to be used as sons for childless families.
Traditionally, the Chinese prefer boys because they are seen as better suited to provide for the family, support elderly parents and carry on the family business, while girls join their husbands' families after marriage. Because of the law that permits the birth of only one child, the enforcement of which has been loosened in recent years in rural areas of China, many couples preferred to abort female fetuses after the ultrasound tests that reveal the sex of the fetus - rather than break the law and have a second child.
As a result, a few years ago the government enacted regulations prohibiting doctors from revealing the sex of the fetus to the parents, after demographic data was published that indicated that the number of male births in China is much greater than the number of female births. Lee called on lawmakers to ban abortions in the second trimester of pregnancy, except in cases of health danger. He added that the combination of the Chinese cultural tradition, the advanced medical tests and the backward national insurance system, especially in the rural areas, caused the serious gap in the relationship between the sexes.
The problem is particularly severe in China's poverty-stricken rural areas. In some of them, the government has already made sure to hang signs bearing the slogan: "Girls are no less good than boys!" There are also those who fear that in the backward rural areas, where health services are not developed, there are those who return to the traditional method of female infanticide, which has been practiced in China for hundreds of years.
According to Prof. Lu Binbin, from the "China Population Information and Research Center", the one-child policy is not the only reason for the imbalance between the number of males and females in the population. "In some rural areas, parents do not take care of girls with the same care as boys, so the death rate among them is higher. The imbalance between boys and girls is greater among children than among babies." According to her, in China there are about 12 million "missing girls" - girls who were supposed to be born, or were born - but were not registered in the population administration to allow their parents another opportunity to give birth to a male child.
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