# European Women and Chinese men have a high risk of conceiving unviable children **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 26, 2013, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943 "2013-06-26T07:35:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/21 "2013-06-26T21:55:04Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Wikipedia suggests the effect on viability in such cases for second children (it doesn’t usually effect firsttime pregnancies) absent treatment is a 5 point increase in stillbirths. Whether that constitutes a “high rate” is in the eye of the beholder, but I feel pretty confident its what the quote in the OP is referencing anyways. absent treatment is the key phrase. What developed country won’t be able to provide such treatment? > [@tralfamidor](#): > > (Another interesting observation I made was that I never saw a _female_ Chinese student at this university, but there were hundreds of male ones.) Are you sure you weren’t at a monastery? ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/22 "2013-06-26T22:26:51Z")
> [@Namkcalb](#): > > absent treatment is the key phrase. What developed country won’t be able to provide such treatment? Key phrase for what? The OP doesn’t specify whether the quote was talking about viability with or without medical attention, and given that the author was apparently talking about genetic differences in populations, and access to medical treatment isn’t a genetic attribute, I doubt whether the difference was in fact key to his argument. Anyways, depending on ones definition of “high rate”, the statement does appear to be true. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/23 "2013-06-26T22:56:19Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > Gai jin means foreign person or outsider, with a usually negative connotation. Gaikokujin (lit. Foreign country person) is more politically correct. Right, in general in Japanese the word for “person of a given nationality” is Place+jin, “jin” being a reading of the character for “person”. 日本人 – nihonjin (nihon jin, nihon being Japanese for “Japan”) “Japanese” アメリカ人 – amerikajin (America jin) “American”　 カナダ人 – kanadajin (Canada jin) “Canadian” 中国人 – chuugokujin (Chuugoku jin; Chuugoku = China) “Chinese” 韓国人 – Kankokujin (Kankoku jin; Kankoku = Korea) “Korean” And so on. Note “koku” in some of them. “Koku” (国) is country. So 外国人, “Gaikokujin”, is an extension of that 外 literally means “outside”, but rogerbox is right that it pretty literally means “foreign country person.” Gaijin, on the other hand, is 外人, which just means “other person” (or “foreign person”). Like any word it’s not a priori bad, but in practice it’s pretty close to “furriner”. > [@Smeghead](#): > > There’s an emerging pseudoscience coming up right now around blood type, where people are claiming it affects all sorts of things from personality to sexual compatibility, and if you pay the right people, they’ll advise you as to what kind of diet you should eat and, presumably, what color clothes you should wear. It’s getting prevalent enough now, particularly from China, that when I see anything vaguely citing blood type as a cause of anything it sets off alarms. Unless there’s more specific information available about these claims, I’d going to go with pure woo. Not sure about China, but that’s been in Japan for a while now. Even when I was little, characters from Japanese shows and games would inexplicably always have their blood type listed on websites or in in-game profiles. It was a while before I learned that in Japan asking someone’s blood type is about the equivalent of asking somebody their sign. All sorts of weird stuff about how certain blood types have different personalities and compatibilities and so on. The OP’s question does strike me as weird pseudoscience though (or at best an odd overestimation of the effect of blood type on viability). ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/24 "2013-06-27T00:24:14Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > It’s been around for awhile, although it may be growing. I remember, years ago, seeing a translated video game from Japan that listed blood type in each character’s stats. It never came up in game play. I was told it was supposed to be a clue to personality, sort of like assigning astrology signs. _Street Fighter II_. It wasn’t “translated”, though; the PAL and NTSC versions had their own original dialogue. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/25 "2013-06-27T04:35:55Z")
> [@tralfamidor](#): > > I have an alternative explanation. > > Due to the one-child rule in China, there is a very high rate of infanticide. This is mostly of girl babies, as tradition still holds that a male child is much more valuable than a female child. (This is supported by the fact that China reports more newborn male than female babies even though everywhere, China included, the sex ratio of newborn babies is 51/50 in favor of females.) A European woman/Chinese man marriage is quite often going to be between people who actually reside in China, where the one-child law applies. That, and the fact that a Chinese man would be more likely to want a traditional, the-man-rules-the-house marriage, makes me suspect that what is really happening is that quite a few children of such marriages are killed at or shortly after birth, and that the authorities cooperate by falsifying the death records. If many Chinese people believe the pseudoscientific myth, mentioned by one poster, that Chinese and Europeans are different species, then that could be touted as an explanation for all the child deaths (Great East Wind Dragon Spirit never want gaijin-Celestial child to happen in first place). tralfamidor, you seem like you live in China? Now, I grant that there are all sorts of Chinese beliefs about blood types, compatibility, and mixed marriages. That said, a) the one child policy does not apply to a parent (mother or father) holding a foreign passport and b) one child policy has been relaxed to a significant degree c) there are loopholes if you have the money Therefore, I think you’re completely off base on the infanticide piece vis-à-vis Chinese father/european mother scenario. I’m happy to be educated, so if you have a cite throw it out, otherwise I’m saying this does not fit with the real situation in China. ---
**Author:** ![moriah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/26 "2013-06-27T05:07:43Z")
ZOMG!! The only way our species can survive is with… A REVERSE HUN INVASION!! ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/27 "2013-06-27T05:10:35Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > _Street Fighter II_. It wasn’t “translated”, though; the PAL and NTSC versions had their own original dialogue. It really could’ve been any fighting game at all, they all list blood types in the manual. ---
**Author:** ![tralfamidor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@tralfamidor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tralfamidor)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/28 "2013-06-27T07:38:50Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > tralfamidor, you seem like you live in China? Now, I grant that there are all sorts of Chinese beliefs about blood types, compatibility, and mixed marriages. > > That said, > a) the one child policy does not apply to a parent (mother or father) holding a foreign passport and > b) one child policy has been relaxed to a significant degree > c) there are loopholes if you have the money > > Therefore, I think you’re completely off base on the infanticide piece vis-à-vis Chinese father/european mother scenario. I’m happy to be educated, so if you have a cite throw it out, otherwise I’m saying this does not fit with the real situation in China. I have a fair amount of contact with both the Chinese community in the US, and several hundred Chinese people who live in China. Both are as a result of my work. I have visited China four times, but never lived there. I can’t speak to b) since I don’t know what you mean by “significant”; I only know that the law is still very much in place and the sanctions for violating it are indeed still enforced. As far as c) goes, I suppose that’s probably true, although just how available the loopholes would be would depend on how much money is needed to use them. My guess would be that even if a citizen did manage to bribe an official to overlook the birth of a second child, it would be pretty difficult to get the authorities to overlook its existence permanently (and the child would be in pretty dire straits later on if its parents could do that). As far as a), if a foreign woman married and lived with a Chinese man in China, she’d have to surrender her former country’s passport. I kowtow to the usual request for citations, but I was speculating, not stating a fact, and it’s pretty hard to verify even the most basic of vital statistics in China. Of course, widespread infanticide is a pretty good reason why they might not want to release such statistics. I’d say their reporting more live male than female births is a pretty good smoking gun, however. Most Westerners don’t believe that as many as 50,000 girl infants are killed each year, but I’ve been told by my Chinese friends that it’s probably accurate. I reacted with incredulity at first, myself. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/29 "2013-06-27T10:28:42Z")
tralfamidor writes: \> I have, in fact, talked to at least two Chinese university students whose \> parents had warned them sternly, in all seriousness, not to fall in love with an \> American woman because they would be unable to have children. So a male Chinese student at an American university calls home to talk with his parent and says, “Mom, Dad, you know how you said that it’s impossible for me to have children with an American woman? Well, when I pick up an American woman in one of the college bars in this town and take her back to my place for the night, she asks if she should be using birth control or if I’m using a condom. I always tell them that it doesn’t matter since it’s impossible for me to get her pregnant. I just wanted to call to tell you that you now have seventeen new grandchildren and another five are on the way.” ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/30 "2013-06-27T11:04:05Z")
I know foreign women who are married and have children with Chinese men, and they most certainly do not surrender their passport or participate in infanticide. As mentioned, one of the numerous exceptions to the one child policy is for children with a foreign parent. Furthermore, foreigners (well, Western foreigners) are treated with some legal delicacy, and no doctor is going to even touch infanticide around a foreigner. It would be too legally risky, and too embarrassing. Finally, among the more progressive young folks, having a girl is increasingly trendy. Today’s young people (especially the type marrying foreigners) are starting to dream of more independent retirement, and are less likely to be looking forward to cramming into their son’s tiny apartment to look after the grand kid all day. Preference for boys is still huge, but it’s slowly waneing. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/31 "2013-06-27T13:24:47Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > It really could’ve been any fighting game at all, they all list blood types in the manual. I can’t recall any others that did off the top of my head. I know _Mortal Kombat_ (at least the SNES and Genesis versions) didn’t because I remember thinking at the time that it would be much more useful information in that game. ---
**Author:** ![tralfamidor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@tralfamidor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tralfamidor)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/32 "2013-06-27T17:17:03Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > I know foreign women who are married and have children with Chinese men, and they most certainly do not surrender their passport or participate in infanticide. As far as surrendering their passports, that only applies to foreign women married to Chinese men and _living permanently in China_. Re infanticide, I doubt that you would know one way or the other. It’s not the sort of thing that gets posted on Facebook. As another poster mentioned, girl babies are no longer viewed as worthless in Chinese society, but I should add that rural areas are where most of the infanticide is said to have occured. It may be urban-trendy to have a girl, but on the farm, she’s a useless mouth who can’t plow a field. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/33 "2013-06-27T17:40:09Z")
Yes, but how many rural peasants are marrying foreign women? How many American women are moving to rural China to marry Chinese peasant farmers? Approximately zero. ---
**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/34 "2013-06-27T21:24:38Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yes, but how many rural peasants are marrying foreign women? How many American women are moving to rural China to marry Chinese peasant farmers? Approximately zero. Cite? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![StarsApart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecc23a/32.png) [@StarsApart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarsApart)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/35 "2013-06-27T22:27:20Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I can’t recall any others that did off the top of my head. I know _Mortal Kombat_ (at least the SNES and Genesis versions) didn’t because I remember thinking at the time that it would be much more useful information in that game. There are a lot of Japanese games that have blood type beyond just fighting games; it’s in a lot of RPGs as well. It’s a pretty big thing in Japan. [This article is an interesting look at it](http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/04/japans-bloody-blood-types/). It’s also got its own trope, “[Personality Blood Types](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PersonalityBloodTypes),” (TVTropes warning!) where you can see a list of video games that include it as apparently vital character information. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/36 "2013-06-27T22:37:42Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I can’t recall any others that did off the top of my head. I know _Mortal Kombat_ (at least the SNES and Genesis versions) didn’t because I remember thinking at the time that it would be much more useful information in that game. Virtually every single SNK game had bloodtypes in the character profiles, check King of Fighters. The blood type predicting personality woo (it doesn’t deserve to be even called pseudoscience) is pretty influential in Japan, IMO it is accepted more than astrology etc are here. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/37 "2013-06-27T23:31:13Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I can’t recall any others that did off the top of my head. I know _Mortal Kombat_ (at least the SNES and Genesis versions) didn’t because I remember thinking at the time that it would be much more useful information in that game. That’s because MK is an American game, others have mentioned more, but I think the first series of games where I really noticed it was one of the Soul Calibur games. ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/38 "2013-06-28T00:17:07Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yes, but how many rural peasants are marrying foreign women? How many American women are moving to rural China to marry Chinese peasant farmers? Approximately zero. How many American women move to rural China to marry backwards ultra-‘traditional’ sexist Chinese peasant farmers? Probably a lot closer to zero. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/39 "2013-06-28T03:17:08Z")
FWIW, it’s usually the anxious middle class, not the dirt poor, who practice gendercide. Poor rural farmers are often exempt from the one child policy, and in any case it’s easier to hide a kid on farms than in a little city apartment. Many of my students has brothers and sisters, often living off the books. It’s people with government jobs and some wealth to lose that really have to toe the line. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943/40 "2013-06-28T03:38:39Z")
> [@tralfamidor](#): > > I can’t speak to b) since I don’t know what you mean by “significant”; I only know that the law is still very much in place and the sanctions for violating it are indeed still enforced. As far as c) goes, I suppose that’s probably true, although just how available the loopholes would be would depend on how much money is needed to use them. My guess would be that even if a citizen did manage to bribe an official to overlook the birth of a second child, it would be pretty difficult to get the authorities to overlook its existence permanently (and the child would be in pretty dire straits later on if its parents could do that). As far as a), if a foreign woman married and lived with a Chinese man in China, she’d have to surrender her former country’s passport. > > I kowtow to the usual request for citations, but I was speculating, not stating a fact, and it’s pretty hard to verify even the most basic of vital statistics in China. This is GQ and you are speculating on answers. How about some ignorance fighting, m’kay? [Here, read this from Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy): The limit has been strongly enforced in urban areas, but the actual implementation varies from location to location.[25] In most rural areas, families are allowed to apply to have a second child if their first-born is a daughter[26] or suffers from physical disability, mental illness or mental retardation.[27] Second children are subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years). Additional children will result in large fines. Families violating the policy are required to pay monetary penalties and may possibly be denied bonuses at their workplace. Children born in overseas countries are not counted under the policy if they do not obtain Chinese citizenship. Chinese citizens returning from abroad are allowed to have a second child.[28] A common practice used in Shanghai by couples that could afford 2 homes (or used a parental home address and their own home), would be to have each parent household registration or “hukou” 户口 registered in a different district of Shanghai. Eg, one house in each district, and one parent + 1 child in each house. No bribes required. As pointed out, foreign permanent residents of China do not have to give up their foreign passport for that status. Even if married to a Chinese national. It is extremely rare for a foreigner to gain Chinese citizenship. And while China does not recognize dual nationality, [the regulations appear according to Wiki to not surrender the foreign passport](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization#China): The naturalization process starts with a written application. Applicants must submit three copies, written with a ball-point or fountain pen, to national authorities, and to provincial authorities in the Ministry of Public Security and the Public Security Bureau. Applicants must also submit original copies of a foreign passport, a residence permit, a permanent residence permit, and four two-and-a-half inch long pictures. According to the conditions outlined in the Nationality Law of the People’s Republic of China, authorities may also require “any other material that the authority believes are related to the nationality application.”[4] Furthermore, passports are the property of the issuing country. Renouncing citizenship or giving up a passport is done between the citizen and the country that issued their passport, not by a second country. Even Sven, do you have a cite for the infanticide in countryside versus the middle class? I only have anecdotes as well but that flies in the face of everything I’ve ever researched or read on the topic. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/european-women-and-chinese-men-have-a-high-risk-of-conceiving-unviable-children/661943.md?page=3)