Girls in China – An Update
From Mara Hvistendahl, “Making Every Baby Girl Count,” Science Vol. 323, 27 February 2009:
pp. 1164-1166.
This reports on a program called Care for Girls, designed to narrow China’s enormous gap in
sex ratio at birth, around 120 boys for every 100 girls.
In 1980, China adopted a one-child policy to counter a population explosion – it included
compulsory sterilization and abortions. Many families went to great lengths to make sure their
one child was a boy, in line with the deep-rooted patrilineal tradition in which sons carry on the
ancestral line and care for aging parents. This resulted in a spike in the sex ratio (from a
biologically stable 1.07 in 1982 to 1.11 in 1990, and still climbing), which led to Communist
Party leaders relaxing the one-child policy in 1984, to allow rural couples with one girl to try
again, sometimes called the “1.5 child policy.” But at the same time, ultrasound machines began
to be introduced into rural China, and the sex ratio continued to rise.
Following China’s 1982 census, demographer Zhu Chu at Xi’an Jiaotong University Population
Research Institute noticed a spike in mortality among girls aged 1-4, and began researching the
causes. She did not have funding for extensive research until she received Ford Foundation
backing in the mid-1990s. Zhu and colleague Shuzhuo Li (postdoc experience at Harvard and
Stanford) then did 2 years of survey work. They found that parents were more likely to avoid
seeking medical help for sick girls who were second or third in birth order, or only had sisters.
There was also evidence (from China, as well as other nations with high sex ratios at birth) that
the proportion of boys born rises significantly with birth order, presumably because mothers
abort female fetuses. The researchers also studied two counties in China that had a matrilineal
tradition – a high percentage of men lived with their wives’ families, and daughters provided
economic and social support to parents equal to that of sons. Both counties studied had normal
sex ratio at birth and low female child mortality.
In 1998 Zhu and Li brought their findings to the powerful National Population and Family
Planning Commission, the body that enforced the one-child policy. The Commission was
beginning to re-position itself as an overseer of reproductive health, and they were planning a
gender-equality campaign. Zhu and Li persuaded the Commission to let them try out a pilot
program called Care for Girls, in the Chaochu area in rural Anhui Province. In 1999, local
Family Planning Commission volunteers, in addition to their traditional birth monitoring and
contraception distribution, started to oversee doctors operation ultra sound machines. They also
incorporated micro-credit grants to women, and social security payments for parents of girls,
designed to remove the stigma long associated with couples who live with the wife’s family and
have daughters. The article mentions Bao Tiezhu and Li Qing, who married in 2002, moved to
Li’s ancestral village, had 2 children in five years who took her surname, not his, and were girls.
Bao relinquished the right to inherit his family’s land, and the couple received preferred land in
their new setting (a prime location on a busy road), as well as $29 in cash on the birth of their
first daughter. They are one of four couples in their 600-person village to have chosen
Uxorilocal marriage – living with the wife’s family. The program includes measures designed to
change local customs, including public praise.
Is the Family Planning Commission the right body to oversee this program, given that it still
fines parents for exceeding the one or 1.5 child policy? Would it be better to scrap the one child
policy altogether? On the other hand, would that solve the sex ratio problem, given that rising
sex ratios are also being experienced across Asia (including in India) in countries that don’t limit
the number of children parents can have? (Haryana State in India in 1994 started paying parents
for having girls, and in 2008 this program was extended by the national government to seven
other states). And the Commission does have the power to bring about rapid social change,
using its army of more than 300,000 volunteer workers.
Li and Zhu argue for further relaxing the one-child policy, but they also argue that, although it
may exacerbate the sex ratio problem, it doesn’t directly cause it. “The essential problem is
culture. And Chinese culture can be changed.” (Shuzhuo Li)
Li now believes that a decade of work is paying off. Chaohu’s sex ratio dropped from 125 in
1999 to 114 in 2002. In the year 2000, the Chinese government scaled up the program to 24
districts around the country (in some of these districts the sex ratio dropped from 134 in 2000 to
120 in 2005). In the year 2006, Care for Girls became a nationwide program.
Have the gains mostly come from a crackdown on sex selection, rather than deeper cultural
change? Other factors helping are the trend to urbanization (some scholars think this reduced the
sex ratio in South Korea), and increases to women’s earning power coming from flows of
migrant workers to wealthy cities in eastern China, with their introduction of new ideas into the
countryside.
Chinese Men: A Rising Tide of Troublemakers?
The flip side of the problem: men who can’t find wives, called guang gun, or “bare branches.”
Over the next two decades there will be at least 30 million Chinese men in this category. Those
who lose out tend to be at the bottom of the social ladder – rural, uneducated, marginally
employed, often transient. Some authors have argued they could be become a “rogue
underclass…who could stir up political instability and even armed revolts.” Others disagree.
Over long history, 10% of Chinese males never married, because the sex ratio has been skewed
for a long time, as a result of female infanticide. But there is no clear evidence, either from
China or from other countries that have experienced the phenomenon, that they will join
rebellions. The worst consequences could be loneliness and lack of social support. Li and
colleagues are intent on finding out, by doing a survey of bachelors over the age of 28 to find out
their circumstances in education, finances, physical and mental health, drinking, sex lives, and
social connections.