It's a Man's World in China Now More Than Ever

China Migrants

They wanted boys and now they have them in droves in China with 18 million more men than women and the testosterone count still growing.

The highly disproportionate ratio sees some 116 male babies to every 100 females born every year in China. The government’s rigid one-child-per-couple policy along with select-sex abortions and a traditional preference for sons has skewed the sexual ratio to an unhealthy level, as unhealthy as the sexist attitudes that helped foster the crisis.

According to USA Today, as many as 40 million Chinese men (mostly poor migrant workers) won’t be able to marry and raise families by the year 2020 since there just aren’t enough brides to go around. The men complain the scarce women who are available are picky and don’t want to be strapped to men without money.

The Chinese census figures show the rate of boys to girls is up in China from 1990. In the U.S. there were 104.8 boys born in 2000 for every 100 girls, a figure considered to be a normal ratio worldwide. The unwed men are known in China as guang guan (bare branches). Guess the fruit shouldn’t have been so forbidden.

The Chinese government is shocked over the bachelor count, calling it “a seriously dangerous ratio,” that will result in the bare branches of society committing sexual crimes to have their needs met. Experts generally consider such acts as crimes of violence rather than sexual desperation, but it isn’t surprising China would rationalize that forced marriages and prostitution, rape and kidnapping might result from men being deprived of spouses. USA Today observes that prostitution already is a huge epidemic in Chinese cities, as well as bride-trafficking in the countrywide which sells women for $600 apiece to those willing to pay the price.

China has long valued boys over girls, one reason the adoption of Chinese female babies has been so popular here in the U.S. It’s believed that sons not only carry on the family name but also become substantial caretakers as their parents age. Daughters are expected to care for their husband’s parents. Adding to the problem has been the government’s one-child policy set in 1979. Aimed at curbing over-population and scare resources such as food and water, it often forced women to have abortions or receive fines for having more than one child. As it turns out, they became selective sex abortions.

A CBS News report says that starting in 1982, the government sent portable, lightweight ultrasound machines throughout the country  to make sure women were using their birth control devices and not getting pregnant. But the machines also helped identify if women not using control were having boys or girls. Conservative estimates figure more than 8 million girl fetuses were aborted in the first 20 years of the one-child policy.

Zhao Baige, vice minister of Family Planning Commission, told CBS it is now against the law in China to get an ultrasound to identify gender – and that if a doctor reveals the sex of a baby to the expectant mother, he or she will be fired and not allowed to practice medicine. Still, it’s reported that Chinese couples fixated on a male baby go around the law by locating ultrasounds underground in back alleys or behind illegal storefronts.

Meantime, the ratio is not just skewed when it comes to babies born. Reuters reported in 2007 that China is the only country in the world where suicides among women outnumber those of men with 80% of the attempts in the city attributed to stress and depression. Go figure.

Image: Hg Han Guan, AP

Luanne Bradley

Luanne Sanders Bradley is the West coast Editor at EcoSalon and currently resides in San Francisco, California.