# Consequences of Gender Ratio in China and India **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 7, 2019, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446 "2019-10-07T20:12:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/21 "2019-10-08T03:38:19Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Since I doubt ultrasound was available for a lot of pregnancies in rural areas until recently, the statistics imply that millions of female babies were probably murdered. I am sure you are basing this on your deep knowledge of the areas in question backed up by years of research.:rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/22 "2019-10-08T08:07:28Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > I am sure you are basing this on your deep knowledge of the areas in question backed up by years of research.:rolleyes: Your accusation that my view is ignorant and poorly researched doesn’t add much to the debate when you haven’t presented any cite yourself to counter it. The skewed sex ratio in China went to more extreme levels in recent decades when ultrasound _did_ become widely available. There was huge demand for ultrasound to screen babies for selective abortion, and it’s illegal to use ultrasound for this purpose. But the skewed sex ratio and the phenomenon “missing women” in China long predates the widespread use of this technology. See Table 3 in this paper: Estimates of Missing Women in Twentieth Century China > **[Estimates of Missing Women in Twentieth Century China](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3830941/)** > > The phenomenon of “missing women” has existed throughout the twentieth century in China. Using data from five censuses, with appropriate adjustments, we estimate the numbers and percentage of missing women from the period 1900–2000. ... There were, for example, 6.5 million “missing women” in the period 1950-1979. Some of those girls died through passive neglect, and preferential use of medical resources to treat boys. That’s barely better than outright murder. But many girls _were_ just victims of infanticide. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/23 "2019-10-08T11:37:46Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > But you can’t selectively provide children of one sex except by selective abortion of the other sex after the sex of the fetus is known, or by post-natal selective murder. Since I doubt ultrasound was available for a lot of pregnancies in rural areas until recently, the statistics imply that millions of female babies were probably murdered. Or they went to the city and were left in a public area where they were found and put up for adoption. This happened alot. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/24 "2019-10-08T11:45:12Z")
I really dont think you all realize just how big foreign adoptions of baby girls was in China years ago. When it started it was out of desperation where you had these Chinese orphanages with horrid conditions begging for adoptive parents. Over time their was a flood of adoptions (I think 3-4 just in my kids school). I saw Chinese adoptive girls everywhere. I knew a family who had 3. We were even looking into it. Money came in and the orphanages were dramatically improved. Sadly after awhile baby girls were being sold off and eventually it embarrassed the Chinese government so they stopped it. I havent seen it for awhile. I think most adoptive children now are from Africa. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/25 "2019-10-08T11:56:07Z")
I don’t think you realise how big China and India are. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/26 "2019-10-08T12:32:53Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Or they went to the city and were left in a public area where they were found and put up for adoption. This happened alot. If girls were adopted within China, then women wouldn’t be missing from the population. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/27 "2019-10-08T12:40:49Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I really dont think you all realize just how big foreign adoptions of baby girls was in China years ago. A total of 267,000 Chinese babies were adopted abroad from 1999-2016. > **[6 Statistics about China International Adoption - International Adoption |...](https://internationaladoption.org/6-statistics-china-international-adoption/)** > > Every country is different when it comes to international adoption. Here are six statistics to help you understand China international adoption. I can’t find data from earlier periods, but I doubt that it’s the order of magnitude larger that would be required to explain a significant number of the tens of millions of missing women in the era before sex-selective abortion was possible. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/28 "2019-10-08T13:24:24Z")
> [@XT](#): > > It’s a pipe dream because it’s actually very difficult to formally immigrate to China and become a Chinese citizen. Hell, there are millions of folks who were born in China, and are Han Chinese, who are’t Chinese citizens…in many of those cases because they were born to families who already had a child and who’s parents hid them so they wouldn’t have to have a forced abortion or have their kid taken away or pay a huge fine (depending on where you are in the CCP pecking order of course). It’s a sign of a cultural blindspot that the powers that be in China don’t consider regularizing the status of those millions of “ghost women”. Or making immigration more attractive/easier for women. It wouldn’t entirely solve the problem, but it would help. Of course, you’d also still have millions of “ghost men”… probably in equal numbers to the ghost women. So maybe it wouldn’t solve anything. Tolerating - if not outright encouraging - male homosexuality would also help alleviate the gender disparity, but that also seems to be a no-go pretty much everywhere, not just China. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/29 "2019-10-08T14:12:02Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Tolerating -\*\* if not outright encouraging \*\*- male homosexuality would also help alleviate the gender disparity I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but I have seen this suggestion multiple times any time the China gender gap issue comes up - “Encourage men to turn gay in order to solve the problem.” Hasn’t the LGBT community been arguing for decades that sexual orientation is a matter of birth, not choice, and they were born gay rather than choosing to be gay? Why, then, “Encourage straight men to choose gayness and that will fix things?” ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/30 "2019-10-08T14:32:36Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > A total of 267,000 Chinese babies were adopted abroad from 1999-2016. > > [6 Statistics about China International Adoption - International Adoption | Agencies, Cost, Photolistings, Process](https://internationaladoption.org/6-statistics-china-international-adoption/) > > I can’t find data from earlier periods, but I doubt that it’s the order of magnitude larger that would be required to explain a significant number of the tens of millions of missing women in the era before sex-selective abortion was possible. A relative adopted two toddlers from China. She was told by the orphanage that the girls would want to return to China ‘to be with their own people’ when grown. Now that they are in college & grad school, neither have any interest. One summed it up, saying “They didn’t care about me, I don’t care about them”. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/31 "2019-10-08T14:38:17Z")
A booming business in headless female sex dolls? Well, that’s what I heard from [John Oliver](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/oct/07/john-oliver-china-one-child-policy-last-week-tonight-recap). ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/32 "2019-10-08T14:43:07Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but I have seen this suggestion multiple times any time the China gender gap issue comes up - “Encourage men to turn gay in order to solve the problem.” Hasn’t the LGBT community been arguing for decades that sexual orientation is a matter of birth, not choice, and they were born gay rather than choosing to be gay? Why, then, “Encourage straight men to choose gayness and that will fix things?” Human sexual preference may not be a deliberate “choice”, but it can be flexible to varying degrees. It seems to me that greater social acceptance for the whole spectrum of consensual sexual behavior couldn’t hurt. Tolerance for those who choose to engage exclusively in homosexual behavior presumably wouldn’t make much difference if there’s a similar prevalence among men and women. But human sexuality can be flexible - bisexual men who _do_ have a choice could choose male partners if there were no social stigma attached. Social acceptance for heterosexual women who choose have multiple partners without condemning them as “sluts” could be helpful. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/33 "2019-10-08T15:35:57Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Long term? Sweet fuck all. Gender ratios tend to get fixed pretty quickly once the underlying cause of the imbalance is lifted, usually in a generation or two. Which is of little comfort to the people now true. A generation or two is what? Around fifty years? The People’s Republic of China is only seventy years old. I think they’re going to see fifty years as a long term. And I think that’s true for most countries. I’d say a handy rule of thumb dividing short term issues from long term issues is ten years. Any issue that’s going to be resolved, one way or another, within the next ten years is a short term issue. Any issue that will still be around more than ten years from now is a long term issue. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/34 "2019-10-08T16:13:44Z")
Back to the OP, Yes, lots of angry single men is a recipe for problems. Either what is the reason to work hard if you dont have a family to work for or you are already angry at the world and look for something to vent your anger on. I wonder if the army or police forces could get plenty of volunteers if they gave them a promise of a wife? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/35 "2019-10-08T16:16:51Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Back to the OP, Yes, lots of angry single men is a recipe for problems. Either what is the reason to work hard if you dont have a family to work for or you are already angry at the world and look for something to vent your anger on. > > I wonder if the army or police forces could get plenty of volunteers if they gave them a promise of a wife? China doesn’t have a volunteer military model. And they actually have been downsizing personnel for a few years now, laying off a bunch of soldiers. This has also not been well received, at least by the folks who were downsized, and was quite a problem 2-3 years ago when Xi first started this. Of course, there are a lot more things that the average Chinese is worried about now that have sort of pushed that to the back burner. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/36 "2019-10-08T16:52:05Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but I have seen this suggestion multiple times any time the China gender gap issue comes up - “Encourage men to turn gay in order to solve the problem.” Hasn’t the LGBT community been arguing for decades that sexual orientation is a matter of birth, not choice, and they were born gay rather than choosing to be gay? Why, then, “Encourage straight men to choose gayness and that will fix things?” I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear. Currently (to my very limited understanding) homosexuality is frowned upon in China and the vast majority of said men are in the closet. At least it is no longer illegal (as of the late 1990’s, which would be a form of tolerance) but there are still strong cultural taboos and liabilities associated with open homosexuality. By “encourage” I _don’t_ mean convert straight men into gay, but rather via propaganda encourage the rest of the county to stop discriminating against homosexuals and gay men to live as gay men rather than to try to marry and fulfill their sexual desires outside of that marriage. Of course, that does lead to the issue of homosexual women - to the best of my knowledge it’s not happening now, but I’d hate to see a situation where lesbians are compelled into heterosexual marriage as a social “duty”. I have my doubt how feasible any of the above would be, and certainly don’t have the wisdom to foresee or understand all of the possible knock-on effect. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/37 "2019-10-08T16:54:51Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Human sexual preference may not be a deliberate “choice”, but it can be flexible to varying degrees. It seems to me that greater social acceptance for the whole spectrum of consensual sexual behavior couldn’t hurt. Tolerance for those who choose to engage exclusively in homosexual behavior presumably wouldn’t make much difference if there’s a similar prevalence among men and women. But human sexuality can be flexible - bisexual men who _do_ have a choice could choose male partners if there were no social stigma attached. Social acceptance for heterosexual women who choose have multiple partners without condemning them as “sluts” could be helpful. ^ This as well. Also, allowing polyandry might help as well, but again I have no idea of the actual feasibility of that. There are some cultures that have polyandry, but they’re rare. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/38 "2019-10-08T17:04:18Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I wonder if the army or police forces could get plenty of volunteers if they gave them a promise of a wife? While I understand the reasoning behind that, the problem from MY viewpoint is that you’re treating women as a commodity or prize rather than human beings. If you guarantee that the young men serving WILL be getting a wife, then you must, as a consequence, take choice away from women. There may be some men that will have a choice of women (as there is now) but the less desirable men will have the problem of women being reluctant to marry them, so the only way to fulfill the promise is to _force_ women to marry them. Of course, you can run a society where women are chattel - there are numerous examples - but personally I have great distaste for that. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/39 "2019-10-08T17:05:34Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I wonder if the army or police forces could get plenty of volunteers if they gave them a promise of a wife? From what I’ve read, China has absolutely no shortage of people who are willing to join its military; indeed, some Party officials even had to resort to paying big bribes in order to ensure that their sons would be accepted into the ranks. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/40 "2019-10-08T18:27:11Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I wonder if the army or police forces could get plenty of volunteers if they gave them a promise of a wife? I see this as a bad idea. If the China significantly increases the size of its police and military forces (and incurs the expenses that would result) there’s going to be an inducement to use this expanded force. And I can’t think of any situation where the PAP or PLA being deployed would be an improvement. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446.md?page=3)