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China – Men Outnumber Women by 33 Million after Decades of Gender Bias
A Chinese mother looks at her newborn baby at a hospital in Shenyang city, northeast China's Liaoning province. Imaginechina
2015-01-22 - China was home to 33 million more men than
women in 2014, renewing a long-running controversy over selective abortion,
abandoned baby girls, and the country's family planning restrictions, according
to government figures released this week.
China's population stood at 1.36 billion at the end of last year, according to
official statistics released this week, of whom 700 million are men and 667
million are women.
"The gender ratio at birth is still dangerously high, with 115.88 boys
born to every 100 girls in 2014," the official Xinhua news agency
reported. The figures compare with a global average of 103 to 107 boys to every
100 girls.
China's gender ratio peaked far above the global average of 107 in 2004 at
121.18, and fell to 115.8 in 2014, the National Health and Family Planning
Commission said in a statement on its website on Wednesday.
But it warned that the ratio is still higher than in any other country.
"The gender imbalance in [China] is the most serious in the world, and has
lasted for the longest period of time and affected the largest number of
people," the Commission said.
It said the government plans to crack down further on blood-testing to
determine the sex of a fetus, as families continue to send blood samples
overseas for testing to circumvent a domestic ban on the practice.
It reiterated warnings to agencies who make money sending the samples overseas,
reminding medical staff that carrying, mailing or transporting blood samples
abroad is illegal.
One-child policy
Experts said the gender imbalance in China's population can be traced back to
the start of the "one-child policy" during the 1970s.
Gender studies scholar Lu Pin, who edits the online newspaper Women's Voice,
said the policy had combined with a preference in Chinese traditional culture
for male heirs, whose duty it is to care for their parents in old age.
"The one-child policies actually allow for the gender bias in favor of
boys, and, as such, can be said to bear some responsibility for reinforcing
it," Lu said.
"In rural areas, the one-child policy was always in effect a
'one-and-a-half child policy,' because couples would be allowed a second child
if the first was a girl," she said.
"If the first-born was a boy, then they wouldn't be allowed to have
another."
She said the government had colluded with traditional ideas that boys are more
valuable than girls.
"We should really reflect on this aspect of our family-planning
policies," Lu added.
Cheng Yuan, acting director of the non-governmental Pingji Center in Guangzhou,
said the stringent population controls of the past four decades had also
ensured that there aren't so many younger people to take care of the country's
elderly.
"The one-child policy has caused other problems, too. Namely that of an
aging population," Cheng said.
"The burden on [younger] relatives will be much heavier, while the aging
problem is more apparent at a time when China's social security and welfare
system is far from ideal," she said.
Easing of restrictions
In the first significant easing of the one-child policy in nearly 30 years,
Beijing announced at the end of 2013 that couples will be allowed to have two
children if one of the parents is an only child.
Previously, most parents were restricted to having one child, although the
political and financial elite were able to afford the financial penalties, and
often have larger families.
Urban couples were permitted a second child if both parents do not have
siblings, while rural couples were allowed to have two children if their
first-born was a girl.
But overseas women's rights campaigners say the changes aren't likely to reduce
the number of forced abortions and abandoned girl babies, or ease human trafficking
in the country, as a growing number of rural men have trouble finding wives.
According to Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of California-based
Women's Rights Without Frontiers, allowing couples to have two children if
either parent is an only child under a so-called reform of the one-child policy
won't end voluntary, sex-selective abortion of baby girls.
Littlejohn has called on Beijing to reduce the numbers of aborted or abandoned
girls by providing economic incentives to families giving birth to girls and
special compensation to retirement-age couples who have no sons to support
them.
And many couples continue to face large fines, seizure of their property and
loss of their jobs, as well as forced abortions and sterilizations, and even violent
forced evictions by local officials, if they break the rules.
China last year launched pilot drop zones for unwanted infants in 25 major
cities last year in a bid to prevent unwanted babies from being left to die on
the streets, but many schemes were forced to close after being overwhelmed,
mostly by infants with severe disabilities.
Reported by Lin Ping for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written
in English by Luisetta Mudie.