China will soon be facing a major woman shortage.
BEIJING - China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women in less than 15 years as a gender imbalance resulting in part from the country’s tough one-child policy becomes more pronounced, state media reported Friday. Traditional preferences for sons has led to the widespread - but illegal - practice of women aborting babies if an early term sonogram shows it is a girl.
The tens of millions of men who will not be able to find a wife could also lead to social instability problems, the China Daily said in a front-page report.
…”Discrimination against the female sex remains the primary cause of China’s growing gender imbalance,” Liu Bohong, vice director of the women studies institute under the All-China Women’s Federation, was quoted as saying in a report from the State Population and Family Planning Commission.
Ya think?
The report, carried in the newspaper, said China’s sex ratio for newborn babies in 2005 was 118 boys to 100 girls, a huge jump from 110 to 100 in 2000.
In some regions such as the southern provinces of Guangdong and Hainan, the ratio has ballooned to 130 boys to 100 girls, the newspaper said. The average for industrialized countries is between 104 and 107 boys for every 100 girls.
…China Daily said one way to solve the problem would be to create a proper social security system so rural couples would not feel they needed a son to depend on when they get old.
I don’t know. The daughters will have the opportunity to be very selective when they choose husbands. Their parents may end up much better off than they would have been with sons.
Seriously, it’s a shame that any society would devalue women to the point that it would end up with a major shortage of them. Not going to even start on the craziness of the government determining how many children a family can have. I wonder if they’ll start paying parents to have girls now.Â
I have a feeling (as an adoptee and mother of a child adopted internationally) the new changes in adoption law for China are a result of exactly this. The new restrictions: officials will refuse adoption to people who are obese, single, over 50 years old or on anti-depressant medication. Prospective parents also will be required to have been married for two years and have no more than four children.
Maybe this is a way to keep more girls (90% of the children adopted from China are girls, of course) in country - no matter they are in orphanages or foster care their entire life.
And I agree with your last paragraph 100%. It’s worse than a shame - it’s sickening.
My first thought on reading this was, time for them to start a war and get rid of some of that surplus.
I’d read the new adoption restrictions, Jen, and had to chuckle at that last one. I’m sure the no-Prozac restriction rules out 85% of American women, even the ones who manage to stay thin and snag a husband. Is there some prejudice in China against what we see as relatively benign medications such as SSRIs?
I would think if they wanted to keep more orphan girls on ice, as it were, for the parented baby boys, they’d juist restrict foreign adoption altogether, or perhaps limit it to less desirable children. Maybe now those orphanages will become little wifey holding pens, where the girls are taught intensive Chinese home ec. and exotic man-pleasing bedroom maneuvers. It’s like a Margaret Atwood novel.
Good Lord, Del! You paint a horrifying picture. Which is probably not far from reality.
Why no mention of ‘bride burning’? maybe if the women weren’t property to be disposed up with no recriminations there would be some respect for human life and the women wouldn’t be seen as a means to an end. It’s not only legal it’s acceptable to murder your wife there.
Elaine, you are just to funny. Don’t ever loose your sense of humor.
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