For years, the census data in China has recorded a significant imbalance in the sex ratio toward the male population, meaning there are fewer women than men. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the missing women or missing girls of China. In 2021, China's official census report showed a sex ratio of 112 male to 100 female births, compared to a global average of 105 or 106 male to 100 female births. This is down from a high of 118 male to 100 female births from 2002 to 2008. The sex imbalance in some areas was even higher. The 2000 Chinese census recorded 138 boys to 100 girls in Jiangxi, making it the province with the highest gender ratio of births in the country.
Some early research into the sex ratio imbalance pointed to sex-selective abortion practices in the wake of China's one-child policy. However, a number of studies have concluded that China's sex ratio was in fact closer to the norm, with population statistics skewed by age because of the number of rural people who did not register their baby girls (i.e., so that they could avoid China's family planning policies). These studies observed that the sex ratio began to even out around 7 years old, when children were registered for school. Similarly, in December 2016, researchers at the University of Kansas reported that the missing women might be largely a result of administrative under-reporting and that delayed registration of females, instead of sex-selective abortion practices, which could account for as many as 10 to 15 million of the missing women since 1982. Researchers found unreported females appear on government censuses decades later due to delayed registration, as families tried to avoid penalties when girls were born, which implies that the sex disparity was likely exaggerated significantly in previous analyses.
Background
Amartya Sen noticed that in China, rapid economic development went together with worsening female mortality and higher sex ratios. Although China has been traditionally discriminatory against women, a significant decline in China's female population happened after 1979, the year following implementation of the reform and opening up under Deng Xiaoping. Sen concluded that there were three reasons why the environment for Chinese women had deteriorated, particularly since 1979:
The one-child policy was implemented in 1979 in an effort to control the size of families, which meant having a "one-child family" for most Chinese families, with some exceptions. Because of a strong son preference, these compulsory measures resulted in a neglect of girls and in some cases led to female infanticide. China did not appear to be systematizing sex-selective fertilization or pre-conception practices; it was therefore assumed that 10% of female children go missing at some point after conception: whether in utero, or in early infancy. Female infant mortality increased dramatically in the years immediately following the reforms in 1979; some statistics imply that female infant mortality doubled from 1978 to 1984.
A general crisis in health services arose after the economic reforms, as funding for China's extensive rural health care programs had previously largely come from agricultural production brigades and collectives. When the economic reforms abolished these traditional structures, they were replaced by the household-responsibility system, which meant that agriculture remained concentrated within the family and the availability of communal facilities in China's extensive rural health care system was restricted. Generally, the effect of a restriction in medical services was neutral, but in a Chinese rural society that looked up to men and down on women, the reduction in health care services significantly negatively affected women and female children.
The household-responsibility system involved a reduction of women's involvement in paid agricultural labor. At the same time, employment opportunities outside agriculture were generally scarce for women. According to Sen's cooperative conflicts analysis, "who is doing productive work and who is contributing how much to the family's prosperity can be very influential", the effect of this systematic change on women within the household was negative, because women had fewer bargaining powers in their families. This reality motivated families to prefer boys over girls, which contributed to reduced care for female children.
Causes The causes of the high sex ratio in China result from a combination of strong son preference, the one-child policy, easy access to sex-selective abortion, food scarcity, and discrimination against and abuses of females.
Son preference in Chinese historical and traditional culture
China's traditional Confucian patriarchal culture has a strong preference for sons over daughters. This preference stems from several perceptions: sons are seen as the continuation of the family line, the offering of ancestor worship, and the main heir to the inheritance. In contrast, daughters are often seen as financial burdens. After marriage, daughters usually become part of the husband's family and are no longer responsible for the care of elderly or sick parents.
With socio-economic development, modernization, and the advancement of women, son preference has declined in many urban areas of China. However, in some strictly traditional families and rural areas, son preference still exists and has resurfaced under the one-child policy. The greatest shortfalls of females appear in parts of rural China, where there are instances of 140 male births for every 100 females.
20th-century family planning measures From 1949 to 1979, Mao Zedong went back and forth between seeing large populations as a source of strength and recognizing the dangers of overpopulation. Although Mao had considered economists' suggestions in the mid-1950s about the possible establishment of a nationwide family planning organization, he later returned to advocating rapid population growth during the Great Leap Forward.
By the 1960s, when population growth rates surged after a nationwide famine, family planning commissions were instated throughout the country. Population control campaigns did not cover ground, however, until after 1971, when a number of voluntary measures, such as later marriage ages, fixed intervals of years between births, and a limit of two children, were advocated by the central government. After Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping rose to power in 1978. Under his leadership, contraceptive measures became priority policies in the context of family planning. Deng believed population control to be essential to economic growth and went to extreme lengths surrounding reproductive control to achieve that goal. Amidst an urgent political culture of economic, and developmental ambition, the government implemented the one-child policy in 1979.
One-child policy
Throughout the 1970s, China experienced a significant population boom. In an effort to enhance environmental and economic conditions by limiting population growth, China implemented its one-child policy in 1979. The policy enacted a number of rules dictating the governmentally sanctioned composition of a Chinese family: each household was permitted one birth, and risked consequences ranging from fines to forced sterilization if they violated regulations. The policy was strictly enforced in urban areas where residential densities were usually higher, and its effects differed depending on the region: it was not heavily enforced among the country's ethnic minorities, and a number of exceptions were made among the majority Han population. The Chinese Communist Party were told to use "patient and painstaking persuasion" as to this would help the people ease up to the family planning ideas. Allowances were also made for families in which the first and only child had a disability.
Xuefeng Chen, director of the Chinese Children's Center in Beijing, stated, "it is undeniable that single children will create a different society, we must first enhance single children's opportunities and abilities at social communication, interaction and development." Single children in China are deprived of the experiences undergone by their mothers and fathers. Their well-being is considered to be at risk; they may exhibit the stereotypical behavior of single children, or be characterized as spoiled, selfish, and unsociable.Zeng, Y and Wang, Z. A policy analysis on challenges and opportunities of population/household aging in China. J Popul Aging. 2014; 7: 255–281 The one-child policy has been called the "most momentous and far reaching in its implication for China's population and economic development." The reproductive freedoms of the Chinese population were utilized as a political tool for social modernization.
The one-child policy highlighted a traditional preference for sons; its results included heightened rates of sex-selective abortion, female child abandonment, and, in some cases, female infanticide.Wen X. Effect of son preference and population policy on sex ratios at birth in two provinces of China. J Biosoc Sci 2003;25:509#21. The policy also resulted in an increased underreporting of female births and adoptions. Chinese health authorities have characterized the gender imbalance among newborns as the "most severe and enduring" in the world, a direct consequence of the country's stringent one-child policy. All of these factors contributed to the stark "missing women" phenomenon, whose social consequences can be observed in an overabundance of single men, and an increase in the kidnapping and trafficking of women for marriage and sex work.
The one-child policy was ended and replaced by a two-child policy in 2016 and then by a three-child policy in 2021.
Food scarcities One of the main factors that led to the creation of the One Child Policy was China's insurmountable food scarcity, which gave its government the authority to have unprecedented amounts of power over rural communities and their land ownership. Following 1956, the state or local governments claimed ownership of all rural lands through mandatory forfeitures and below-market-value compensations. As a result, farmers were limited in their ability to raise capital since they could not sell, rent, or buy land to make more economically viable tracts or use the land as collateral for loans. The government's control over land also decreased individual incentives to work hard, as the farmers could not make a profit from the crops they produced, consequently leading to large-scale starvation and a deepened divide between society's elite and its most vulnerable populations.
Food shortage issues were further worsened by the successive droughts in the Yellow River Basin, Southwest and Southern China, the North China Plain, and the Yangtze River from 1958 to 1960. These resulted in deplorable agricultural conditions for almost every region in China and triggered the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961.
Sources As a result of the one-child policy and traditional son preference, China's missing female population is formed through sex-selective abortion, discrimination in care for females, and non-registration of girls at birth.
Sex-selective abortion