China's gender imbalance is so serious that millions of men will
not be able to find wives a decade from now.
If current birth ratios were to continue, between 2015 and 2030
there will be 25 million men in China with no hope of finding a
mate, according to a study issued by France's National Institute of
Demographic Studies in October last year.
However, the program "Care for Girls" offers hope that the
imbalance can be righted. The program launched by the State
Population and Family Planning Commission (SCPFP) in 2003 in 24
pilot counties provides social benefits, including cash payments,
to families with only girls, in order to boost the status of girls
and women.
The program is credited with reducing the boys-to-girls ratio in
those counties from 133.8/100 to 119.6/100 over the past three
years.
The SCPFP will now extend the program to all provincial
regions.
In Wuwei County, in east China's Anhui Province, a 38-year-old peasant woman
named Ding Xiufang burst into tears when her 12-year-old daughter
called her "mom" for the first time.
In 1994, Ding and her husband asked Ding's mother to bring up
their daughter because the couple were eager to have a boy and were
too poor to look after two children at the same time.
When Wuwei County was selected for the first trial of the "Care
for Girls" program in 2003, the county family planning committee
provided Ding with funds to grow food and vegetables at home while
her husband received a four-wheel vehicle to transport goods.
Two years after the program was launched, the couple had fought
their way out of abject poverty and have now built a two-storey
house beyond their wildest dreams. They brought their daughter home
and fitted out a study for her, allowing the girl to finally
experience parental love.
There are echoes of Ding's story throughout Wuwei County. A
family with one or two girls will receive 30,000 yuan (US$3,750)
worth of subsidies before the girls are married, including aid
funds, education assistance and exemptions.
In rural China couples are allowed to have a second child if the
first one is a girl.
Even if the notion of "ladies first" is increasingly accepted in
Chinese cities, the saying "raising a daughter is like watering
someone else's fields" is deep-rooted among people in rural China.
Traditionally, elderly peasants could only depend on their
sons.
Wang Jianhui, a farmer with two daughters in Fengming town,
Qishan County, in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, no longer worries about his
old age. The local government has provided Wang and his wife with
an endowment insurance which will pay them 1,200 yuan (US$150)
every year after they turn 60.
"I never imagined daughters could bring me such benefits," Wang
said.
Some parents used to abort the wife's pregnancy if tests showed
the fetus was female so that they could try again for a boy. As a
result, there are 119 boys born for every 100 girls in China, an
imbalance much higher than the global ratio of 103-107 boys for 100
girls.
Only seven out of 31 provincial regions report a gender ratio
below 110 boys to 100 girls and boys under the age of nine
outnumber girls in the same age group by 12.77 million.
To curb the male-dominated gender imbalance, the Chinese
government initiated the "Care for Girls" program and has beefed up
efforts to fight sex selection abortion.
China has prosecuted 3,000 cases of fetus gender identification
and selective abortion for non-medical purposes over the past two
years.
(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2006)