Growing Sex Imbalance Shocks China

An alarming rise in the sex ratio of newborn infants in China suggests that increasing numbers of female foetuses are being aborted by parents intent on having a male child.

More than 116 male births were recorded for every 100 female births according to results of a national census which have just been released.

Officials in Beijing fear that the resulting imbalance will "damage social and economic stability" in the future, and encourage the trade in kidnapped women.

The data has been revealed in an unusually frank report of the problem issued by the China news service in Beijing. It says that officials are concerned by a "continued upward trend" in the newborn sex ratio.

The natural ratio should be 105-107 males per 100 females. The Chinese figure was only slightly above this norm 20 years ago.

The current high of 116.9 males to 100 females is more than five percentage points higher than the figure of 111.3 males recorded in the last full census in 1990.

The census - which was carried out two years ago - reveals a figure as high as 135 in one region.

Traditional prejudice among rural Chinese in favour of male offspring has been reinforced by economic reforms which mean that sons can earn more than daughters in the new labour market.

The official "one-child" policy increases the perceived value of male births although a second child is allowed in many rural areas. Urban middle-class families are also more likely to decide that "one is enough" if their first child is male.

Many rural Chinese women are using ultrasound scans to determine the sex of their foetus and ensure the birth of a boy, according to research published by the US-based Population and Development Review.

More than 300 out of 820 women surveyed in a central Chinese village had abortions and more than a third of them admitted they were trying to select their offspring's sex.

"Prenatal sex selection was probably the primary cause, if not the sole cause, for the continuous rise of the sex ratio at birth," concludes Professor Chu Junhong of Beijing University's institute of population research.

Female infanticide, notorious in China's past as a primitive method of sex selection, is now thought to be infrequent.

The male-female ratio for live births reported in the 2000 census shows wide variations between China's provinces.

Five provinces show more than 125 male births for every 100 females, with the percentage reaching 130 in Guangdong and as high as 135 in Hainan.

The official Chinese media have recently begun to acknowledge more openly such difficult social issues as HIV-Aids and the gap between rich and poor as well as the sex imbalance.

Some Chinese experts claim that there are already as many as 70 million more males than females in the country.