China’s Cassandra prophecy
I knew things were bad in China thanks to its one-child policy, but this article points out horrible consequences that probably few people know about. And yet, sadly, it doesn’t look like China has learned enough to change its ways, still!
The Government’s 2020 vision has been blind-sided by a think tank’s report on its population policy disaster.
To say that China’s one-child family policy has been a disaster is an understatement. A report released earlier this month by the nation’s top think tank – the Communist Government’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) – says that the policy has created a huge gender imbalance with significant implications for future social stability.
Indeed, according to the report, 24 million men reaching marriageable age by 2020 will never marry because of the sex imbalance. Think of it in these terms: what if the entire population of New York City or of Australia was never able to marry. Imagine the social implications in a city or nation that large where no one can marry. Imagine if that city or country is comprised solely of 24 million men; men with no homes to return to at night; men without the responsibilities of a family to keep them engaged in productive pursuits.
The CASS report – carrying the understated title “Contemporary Chinese Social Structure” – raises some key questions but it is short on answers.
Since the report was published many Chinese bloggers have been commenting on its implications. Some more daring Chinese netizens have highlighted that many boys entering puberty are oblivious to the fact that they will never be able to marry; they ask which parents wish to tell their sons to prepare for a bleak future alone – unable to find a wife and unable to establish their own families. Interestingly the CASS report termed those condemned to bachelorhood “bare branches” because they would not be able to establish family trees of their own.
How China got to this pitiful state is well documented. A rigid one child per family policy, legal and easily available abortion, and a cultural and economic preference for sons, resulted in sex selective abortions since the early 1980s. Laws to deter such behaviour have failed resoundingly. For example, obtaining knowledge of an unborn baby’s sex from ultrasounds was made illegal to stop abortions of baby girls by the 1990s. But throughout China’s rural villages and towns it remains possible to bribe staff in medical clinics and hospitals to find out the sex of an expected child. Once the parents decide to abort an unborn baby, Chinese law does not require them to carry an unborn baby girl to term.
More girls than boys are aborted. Many more. So much more that Mao Zedong’s words – to emphasise the equality of the sexes – that “women hold up half the sky” will soon ring hollow.
Loading ...
