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In China, help for girls
By Jim Yardley
January 31, 2005
China For farming families in the lush mountains of Fujian Province, the famous
crop is oolong tea and the favorite source of labor is sons. The leafy bushes
of tea fill the hillsides the same way young boys fill the village streets.
There is such a glut of boys here - roughly 134 are born for every 100 girls -
that the imbalance has forced an unlikely response from the Chinese government.
To persuade more families to have girls, it has decided in some cases to pay
families that already have daughters.
The Communist Party is often vilified for its so-called one-child policy. The
government credits the policy for sharply slowing China's population growth but
critics say it is a major reason many families now use prenatal scans and
selective abortions to make certain that their child is a boy.
Today, China has one of the world's worst cases of "missing" girls. Until
recent years, the government largely ignored or denied the problem. Last March,
President Hu Jintao declared that it must be solved by 2010. Government
officials now have declared that selective sex abortions would become a
criminal offense. Such abortions were already banned, but doctors often
accepted bribes from parents who wanted to guarantee a boy.
Government officials are hardly backing away from population control. But the
government is examining various possible changes. Last year, the State Council,
China's cabinet, appointed a research group of 250 demographers and other
experts to examine issues like gender imbalance, dropping fertility rates and
how to prepare for China's rapidly aging population. It may also address
whether and when China should move to a nationwide two-child policy to prevent
a looming baby bust.
"In the future, I think we have to consider this issue," said Hao Linna,
spokeswoman for the National Population and Family Planning Commission.
"As for what time, when and how we need to research these issues. We need to
study how to shift, in what form and what method."
Yet government officials agree that reversing the birth imbalance cannot be
postponed. Experts debate to what extent China's population policy should be
blamed for the problem, noting that the problem predates the one-child policy.
Other Asian countries like India and South Korea without such policies also
have lopsided birth rates. But statistics show that China's imbalance has
widened since population controls began in the late 1970's.
In early January, the government announced that the nationwide ratio had
reached 119 boys for every 100 girls. Studies show that the average rate for
the rest of the world is about 105 boys for every 100 girls. Demographers
predict that in a few decades China could have as many as 40 million bachelors
unable to find mates.
On a recent afternoon here in southeastern China, hundreds of students in the
dirt courtyard of Lanxi Middle School held a parade rehearsal. The school goes
through 12th grade, and about 60 percent of students in the higher grades are
male. The marchers, mostly boys, waved flags and kicked dust in the air beside
a billboard promoting the latest propaganda campaign: Respect Girls.
Local officials brought a visiting reporter here because Lanxi Middle School is
participating in A "Care for Girls" pilot program. Female students from poor
families are getting free tuition, as are students from families with two
girls. Principal Hu Hongbin happily shows off an exhibition room where posters
carry pictures of girls in the program.
Hu said the exhibition room was supposed to build the self-esteem of girls,
though it also seemed intended to impress visiting officials. Still, he said
that female students were now eligible for college scholarships and that the
number of recent female graduates attending college jumped to 271 in 2004 from
149 in 2003.
Lin Lingling, 18, a plucky senior who has hopes for college, is one of the
stars of the program. "They say boys are good at logical things, so when they
enter into high school, they say some of them are a lot better," said Lin, a
top student. "But we are the same."
Still, most Chinese parents, particularly in rural areas, prefer sons. Li
Shengming, an official with the Anxi Family Planning Commission, said this
preference dated back centuries and was largely rooted in practical concerns.
Farm families want sons for their labor, while all parents, worried about their
old age, know that Chinese tradition holds that a son must care for his
parents. A daughter, on the other hand, marries into her husband's family.
In the countryside, where there is no real social safety net, a son is
considered the equivalent of a pension.
"It used to be that if you had only girls, you were looked down upon," Li said.
In response, the government has introduced a test program under which about
300,000 rural elderly people are receiving annual pensions of $180, a good
amount in the countryside, if they had only one child or if they had daughters.
Li said these fiscal incentives were intended to give monetary value to girls,
and by doing so, reduce the incentive to abort them. Even so, the limited scope
of the program has reduced its impact. Hao, the Beijing official, said Anxi was
one of only 24 cities where girls were getting financial aid, and the budget is
not expected to increase greatly.
China's population policy long ago ceased to be a true one-child rule. In broad
terms, urban families, with exceptions, are usually limited to one child while
rural families are allowed a second child if the first is a girl. Minority
families, meanwhile, are sometimes allowed three or more children to keep their
populations from declining.
Even so, attitudes will be difficult to change in China. Officials used the
recent birth of the country's 1.3 billionth citizen as a propaganda vehicle to
laud efforts to slow population growth.
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China
to make sex-selective abortions a crime
1-7-2005
China
offers parents cash for girls
9-1-2004
China
hopes to fix gender imbalance among newborns by 2010
7-15-2004
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