ABSTRACT
In May 1980, I listed sex ratio at birth as one of the six demographic problems in the Report on the Demographic Meetings that was to be submitted to the Secretariat of the CCCPC. In the report, I attempted to discuss whether the ratio would show human-assisted loss of balance after the policy of one child per couple:
For example, some may attach to the traditional value of having a son to continue their family lines and go to such extremes as to drown or desert their newborn daughters. The problem deserves attention and such behaviors must be prohibited by law.
In November 2006, while speaking as a guest at China web, I commented on a previous media report that asked, “what to do with the 40 million single men in China,” and said that there were fewer than 30 million more men than women under the age of 29, that there would not be a big problem if immediate measures were taken to check the increasing sex ratio at birth given that women were usually two years younger at marriage than men, and that the problem would be overwhelming with the increases in the ratio piling up if nothing was to be done; therefore, I called for the government to take measures as soon as possible.
In 1927, American novelist Ernest Miller Hemingway published a story collection, Men without Women. More than 90 years have passed now, and some depictions in the title novel have come true: there are nearly 100 million more men than women in Asia! With the largest population in the world, China has attracted widespread attention for its growing sex ratio at birth for quite a while.
According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), the sex ratio at birth in China had declined for six consecutive years since 2009, reaching 115.88 by 2014, which was a significant achievement. However, we must also acknowledge that the ratio was still not safe yet as 115.88 exceeded the upper limit of the normal range, 107, by 8.88, and there is still a long way to go to bring the ratio down to the normal range. We will of course continue the efforts, with the lessons learned from past experiences and the determination to make more reforms to put an end to the population and other policies that resulted in the increases in the ratio.
In recent years, illegal agencies and individuals extended their business online and provided home service or brought pregnant women to a safe site to draw their blood and had the samples stored in simple cold containers and sent abroad for sex testing. There has been a chain of profit on this business, adding imbalance to the already imbalanced sex ratio at birth in China. Fortunately, the NHFPC has identified the key points of the illegal business of blood testing for fetus sex through careful investigation and taken a series of measures to prevent the crime in collaboration with several government agencies.
