Amazing First-Hand Account Of The Massive Gender Disparity In China

Angry Chinese

Peter Hitchens at UK's The Daily Mail went to China with the express purpose of writing about the country's massive male-female gender disparity and has published a must-read account of the situation.

If the reality is anywhere near Hitchens' interpretation, it's a scary situation.

Here he describes a visit to a school:

But as the children stared and chattered and giggled - and pulled at their own little noses to make fun of my enormous one - I quietly counted them, while my colleague Richard photographed them.

And in every cheerful classroom there was a slightly sinister shortage of girls, as if we had wandered into some sort of science fiction fantasy.

We had come to this region because of rumours that it has the most startling ratio of boys to girls in the country. One academic source has suggested there could be a ratio of 168 males for every 100 girls in Danzhou.

Something is clearly out of kilter. In one class of ten-year-olds, only 20 out of 80 were girls. In another classroom, it was 25 out of 63.

Why the massive disparity?

Hitchens cites the one-child policy (which is being enforced less and less), an ovewhelming preference towards boys, and cheap, readily-available abortion.

The government is obviously freaked out, knowing full-well the potential dire consequences of this:

But a painted slogan also discourages the abortion of unborn girls that everyone knows is going on despite laws which - in theory - ban the use of scans to check the sex of the child, and punish selective abortions.

In red lettering on the village hall are the optimistic words: 'Boy or Girl? Let Nature decide.' And huge new billboards stand at key points throughout the district.

They show idealised young families: a single daughter accompanies her parents, her arms affectionately outstretched amid fields of flowers. And they carry such slogans as 'Caring for girls is caring for the future of our nation!' or 'Times have changed! Boys and girls are the same!' and 'Boys and girls are both treasures'.

According to his report, by 2020, there will be 30 million more marriage-age men then women.

What will be the ramifications to this?

A few ideas come to mind:

A more aggressive military.

A continued housing bubble, as males are forced to bid up real estate if they're to have any hope of attracting a mate.

A more robust pan-Asian sex trade driven by Chinese demand.

We probably don't know many of the consequences yet.

But anytime the natural sex market is threatened in some way things tend to not work out very well (see: polygamist sects in Utah). How things will play out in China is anyone's guess. We just know it will be bad.

Read the whole story at The Daily Mail >

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