This isn't a new topic. I've heard this before, just wondering what's HL opinion on this.
Here's the dope documentary I'm watching...
China's Future with Fewer Females
Thanks to the one-child policy, first implemented in 1979-80, there is an unusual shortage of females in China. By 2020, there will be an estimated 40 million Chinese men who will not be able to find brides -- at least Chinese ones -- and in China, bachelors are extremely rare. So how might this play out, for both men and women? We asked Susan Greenhalgh, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, an expert on China's family planning policies and author, with Edwin A. Winckler, of Governing China's Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics (Stanford University Press, 2005) and Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China (forthcoming, University of California Press).
A poster outside a Birth Planning Office
A poster outside a Birth Planning Office in Yuncao Town, Anhui Province. The slogan reads, "To make the state rich and strong and your family happy, please carry out family planning."
Twenty-five years after China implemented its one-child policy, the unintended consequences are clear: Thanks to a sexist culture and the contemporary political economy, the world's most populous nation has the largest gender gap at birth. In 2000, for every 100 girls that were born, 120 boys were born, and in some poorer regions, there are twice as many boys as girls.
Fortunately, infanticide and abandonment of baby girls by Chinese parents desperate to have a son -- practices that have concerned Americans -- have become increasingly rare, but still the gender gap, now largely the result of sex-selective abortion, will have a profound impact on families, workplaces and the distribution of power in Chinese society. What does a population with a shortage of females mean for China's future? How will the masculinization of China affect global politics?
Many people believe that if women become rarer, in today's world, their social "value" will increase, leading to greater empowerment. But, unfortunately, when demographics are filtered through sexist cultures and economic and political influences, there can be complicated and unpredictable effects; in the case of China, an imbalance in the relative numbers of males and females can only be bad. Already a shortage of females (or an excess of males, depending on how you look at it) has caused a host of problems that no one -- not even China's leaders -- has thought much about. Informed speculation is the only way to envision what effects China's gender imbalance might produce in the decades to come.
Two Chinas, Two Worlds of Girlhood
China's entry into the global capitalist economy has brought growing -- indeed, glaring -- gaps between the haves and the have-nots: While millionaires in Shanghai drive around in their Mercedes, dirt-poor villagers in remote areas lack even running water. Most of the haves live in or near China's cities, especially along the eastern seaboard, while the have-nots live in the villages, particularly in the interior of the country. With the emergence of two Chinas has come the emergence of two worlds of girlhood, with important implications for girls' life chances.
Young girl leans against a wall
Young girl in Dayang Village, Anhui Province.
For many city girls in the "rich China," the one-child policy has been a boon. To their parents, who have wage jobs, secure incomes and pensions, boys are no longer needed to provide labor, income and old-age support -- the concrete economic bases for traditional son preference.In well-to-do, urban families, girls are now considered as good as boys. Indeed, for many parents, daughters are deemed better than sons because they are emotionally closer to their parents and more willing to provide personal care in old age. In the competition to produce the perfect "quality" child, city girls are now given all the benefits, from good educations and health care, and all the extras, from piano lessons to private tutors in English, that once would have been the prerogative of boys. As the major beneficiaries of the one-child policy, these urban girls are well equipped to prosper in the modern globalizing economy and society of China's future. This will surely continue into the future.
But for many village girls in the "poor China" the future looks more bleak. Although female infanticide and abandonment are now rare, prenatal sex-determination followed by sex-selective abortion are now a normal part of the culture of reproduction in vast swaths of rural China. In some areas up to 90 percent of second pregnancies that are female end in abortion. Girls who are allowed to live still fare better than they used to, with more education and better health care, but often they lose these privileges if younger brothers are born.
Fortunately, even in the countryside, traditions of gender bias in the family are now changing. As sons have become more mobile, many have abandoned their rural parents, reneging on their obligation to provide old-age support. Like their urban counterparts before them, parents in some villages are just now beginning to treat their daughters as surrogate sons, investing in their educations and health care so that they will be able to support them well in old age. This trend is likely to continue, boding well for rural-born girls in the future.
A Growing Marriage Crisis, a Growing Market in Women
In China, even more so than in the United States, marriage is essential to being accepted as a member of society. Now, we're seeing the first generation from the one-child policy come of marriageable age and facing a shortage of brides and a surplus of grooms.
In this male-preponderant society, the vast majority of women who wish to marry will be able to do so, but men will not be so fortunate. By around 2010, demographers estimate, the marriage market for first marriages will be seriously unbalanced, and within decades tens of millions will be unable to find brides. Rich men will have no trouble attracting brides (and mistresses), but growing numbers of poor, illiterate village men will not be able to marry, as women take the opportunity to "marry up." Statistics already illustrate the trend: In 2000, 4 percent of all men aged 40 had never married, while for men with the lowest level of schooling, the figure was dramatically higher at 27 percent.
In recent years, clandestine smuggling networks that rely on long-distance buying and selling of women and adolescent girls have emerged.
So how will these men obtain brides? Some will marry much younger women, while others will get wives through unorthodox means. For example, in border areas like Yunnan province, brides are imported from Vietnam and Myanmar. In poor interior provinces, the shortage of women has given rise to cases of informal polyandrous unions in which the wife of one man informally services several others[you share that girl -Serious]. Then there's also marriage by capture. In recent years, clandestine smuggling networks that rely on long-distance buying and selling of women and adolescent girls have emerged. While forcible abduction does take place, usually girls are lured or purchased from their families in poor areas, promised jobs, and then transported long distances to villages where they are bought by poor men.
Despite the efforts of government agencies and women's groups to stop this kind of trafficking, escape from these often abusive situations is generally difficult because the "outside brides" are cut off from their families, and village society supports the husbands. In this scenario, both parties lose: women are trapped, and the men often end up feeling cheated of what they rightfully "own."
What about men who cannot find bridesSome have suggested that they will become roving bands of hooligans, others that they will join the army, promoting a more bellicose and aggressive China. These speculations of a more violent future, based on historical analogies from the late imperial period, seem misguided. More likely, the solutions will be more peaceful, if difficult. For example, unmarried men may live with their adult brothers or sisters, or they may form communities of their own in which new mutual support groups develop, or they may rely on prostitutes for sexual release. However this plays out, change will be difficult and will involve wrenching transformations in one of the most fundamental institutions of Chinese society.
read more: China From the Inside . Women | PBS
Here's the dope documentary I'm watching...
Last edited by a moderator:
