I’ve always thought the story about Chinese murdering female babies because of a preference for males was just racist propaganda that has been largely discredited for decades. I’ve started hearing it repeated again lately, though mostly from people trying to vilify China for reasons of their own. However, I recently read a post where Falcon, whose opinions I’ve come to trust over the past weeks and months, states the same story as accepted fact. What’s the truth? Is there real evidence of widespread baby-killing now or recent past in China?
I had a little trouble finding any decent cites, but here’s one that suggests that it’s not propaganda from http://forerunner.com/mandate/X0049_News_from_China_23.html
Not only the mothers do it. Not long ago, China introduced its one-child policy to try to lower their population. Now there is necessarily alot of fathers that want a son but get stuck with just a daughter. There have been plenty of reports of infanticide so that the family can have another chance at having a boy. FWIW, I don’t think the one-child policy is mandatory (ie, noone gets shipped off to a forced labor camp if a second child comes along), but there are really good tax breaks for families that don’t have more than one (living) child.
But it was pretty accepted as FACT by the people I spoke with IN China. Not that it happened as a matter of course, but that it happened enough that it was an accepted and recurring issue. Everyone pointed at everyone else, of course, because while it was done, nobody thinks it is a good idea. (that is, the intellectuals pointed at the peasants, the peasants pointed at the workers, the city folk pointed at the country folk, the Han pointed at the minorities - okay, SOME minorities, the rest they were trying to marry, the minorities pointed at the Han, one region pointed at another, and everyone called ‘whoever’ is doing it ‘backward,’ ‘short-sighted,’ and generally bad.) Much like child abuse here, about 1-2 decades ago (and still somewhat now).
While I was there, I read a few articles (of course, the press reports cannot always be trusted) in the national press that pointed out that there are regions of China where the birth rate was normal (slightly more males than females), but within the first year, the rate of survival, rather than beginning to even out by more male children dying (the usual pattern), had swung to strongly male. I think one area was 116 boys to 100 girls. This was cited as evidence that female infanticide was still being practiced, either by intent or by neglect. Note that not EVERY girl was being lost, and you don’t know if families that already had girls were killing the second, (or even third), or what. Neglect was assumed to be a larger factor than direct murder (girls getting less food, or less of the good stuff, being nursed for less time, being watched less carefully, etc.). There was quite a push in the late 80’s to end the practice, partly because ‘modern’ societies just DON’T DO THAT, and it made the entire culture/society/country look bad. Lots of propaganda, and a lot of prosecution, too.
Issues relevant to the situation were (granted, last time I was there was 1989): 1) Still very strong expectation that women will take care of their husband’s parents in old age. 2) Limited earning potential for women even if single (again, can’t afford to take care of parents), 3) Little real security for old age without family support, 4) Little expectation that women can take over businesses (or should, even if they can). Add the general cultural value of boys as more important than girls, value of carrying on the family name, relevance of the status of sons to parents status, and see what happens.
HOWEVER, these expectations and attitudes varied a LOT by geographic region, and were eroding even when I last was there. There was a fair amount of discussion as to what kind of government programs would reduce the pratice (such as social security type programs). Also, there was less acceptance by the legal system of infanticide, so there’s probably been a shift almost completely toward abandonment (including giving them up for adoption), neglect, and selective abortion, instead. I don’t know the state of the one-child-family enforcement (which, by the way, was a voluntary contract thing in most places) but most of the people I knew there were very much in the mode of “one child if it’s a boy, and two if the first is a girl.” In farming areas, two was pretty common, and officials apparently looked the other way on ‘extras’ where the extra hands would be USEFUL. Plus, if you could afford to pay for the priviledge, you could get away with three sometimes.
Almost all the college educated people I talked to said they’d stick with one, girl or boy, but you could see it was an intellectual/political decision for some of them, not necessarily in tune with their emotions. And certainly enforcement in some areas would be severe, while in others hardly enforced at all, and in others, enforced primarily on those who cannot throw some influence or money around. The number of people who actually stopped with one girl also was increasing the value of girls - if that is all you get, you are going to have to adjust your attitude, just because you love her.
There are also plenty of regions in China where girls are valued traditionally, or at least high enough that only a crazy person would severely neglect a girl JUST because she was a girl.
Most media commentary I’ve heard over here (US) has been incredibly narrow and biased, especially whereever there was a social, cultural, or political conflict between ‘them’ and ‘us’. If you could call it ‘government control’ or even just STRANGE, it was played up in the press. For instance, I NEVER heard the press here mention that people agreed in a CONTRACT to have one child, and the usual punishment for contract violation was that you had to pay back all the free goodies you got for the first one (healthcare, education, food vouchers, etc.), and only 1 in 5 families of childbearing age even signed the contract to start with. Nor did anyone clarify that if the first child was disabled or died, you could try again under the same contract. Everyone I know here seems to have assumed that the ‘model’ village for population control (as shown in documentaries) was the NORM, not the political ‘proof-of-concept’ site. The same is true for infanticide - it happens, but neither as much as the news here would have you think, nor in the manner in which you are encouraged to imagine (the truth being probably less violent and heartless but more miserable). The adoption of girls from China is one of the most recent hot button images - all those abandoned girls, sitting completely ignored and nearly catatonic in group homes… yes, it happens, but it is easy to get the numbers wrong, either too high or too low. And again, it probably varies dramatically by region, and the reasons and methods are probably different than we are encouraged to imagine, too.
How much female infanticide happens is not exactly clear, even viewed from up close. There certainly is a gender bias, and I’d like to see the birth rate and 1-year-old population numbers by gender. Those numbers should tell you how widespread the bias is. Boys normally have lower survival rates in the first few years and nature compensates by larger numbers of boys being born overall. So if the norm is 106 boys born to 100 girls, and within a few years normally this balances to 1:1, and you instead have 110b:100g ratio at 1 year, you have at least a suggestion that female infanticide and/or neglect is still happening. (of course, the numbers can easily be cooked in either direction to make a point for whatever political program is currently hot.) Gender selection through ultrasound and abortion isn’t unknown in the US, either, and I’d be really surprised if it DIDN’T happen in China. The RATE at which it happens is not something I’d necessarily trust as hard numbers, though.
While I can understand China’s policy to limit population growth, policy makers are being very short sighted. The reaction has been to abort female fetuses, as in India, because the family wants a boy. Ok, but think about it after some fifteen - twenty years have past and there are many more boys than girls: the premium will be on girls.
> Average dowery rates will skyrocket,
> families will see an increased value in their daughters which may even be increased further by having them educated [a phenom that’s occuring in West Africa],
> Lowering the murder rate of new wives once the dowery has been paid, the young women are needed for producing more children
> there will be a better choices in the boy pool which could lead to weaning out jerks from the gene pool
I guess I am rambling, but there are some interesting consequences…
I guess the worst disadvantage will be the oversupply of testosterone which would lead to greater, more intense displays of “malehood”, ie: Central Park-type groping parties, increase in petty to serious crime, more street violence, more war… The lab process which filters out male sperm [to have male heirs] would probably become more common; what are the consequences of that? This is getting depressing.
I’m with Kiffa on this. A large surplus of Chinese and Indian men with no corresponding women will probably result in a series of really nasty wars in asia. Given the current political climate, they might well become nuclear wars.