Saturday, March 10, 2012
Disproportionate Number of Males in China
This Draft perfectly dove-tails with the topic of the previous post.
As you have probably heard, there exists a disproportionate number of males in China right now. Last I checked the ratio was about 120 male births to every 100 female births, meaning there's about a 1.2 male:female ratio. While this might not seem like that big a number discrepancy, you must keep in mind that there are about 1.3 billion people in China now. That's a short scale billion, by the way. A thousand million, not a million million. So a 1.2 imbalance builds up right fast.
As you probably also know: there's a One-Child policy in force. The policy was implemented for some good reasons: chiefly to control population growth in order to decrease poverty, which it did spectacularly.
This by itself did far more good than harm. However, in conjunction with the traditional exaltation of having a male first-born, we run into some serious problems. When you only get one and you make it a son... where are the daughters?
Before you point them out, can we all assume we know the agricultural and social incentives for having male offspring? Stronger field hands in the family, continuing the family name and all that. We know. Or we should anyway.
Well, all those reasons were well and good in the day, but they don't hold up in post-industrial society, and so we get to the crux of my previous argument: tradition's yoke on the collective mind.
There are a lot of men in China now who will never have the chance to start families simply for want of a mate. To put it crudely, there just aren't enough girls to go around, heh. Furthermore, not all those girls need marry either! The bind tightens ever more...
I'm not going to go into all the economic problems and solutions, and the problems that would be caused by the solutions here. Suffice it to say, something's gotta give.
A small disclaimer: Contrary to the popular opinion, the One-Child policy isn't really ironclad anyway. Some families in rural areas are already allowed to have a second child if the first turned out to be a girl, and, of course, people who can afford the fee can have more children. Money opens doors everywhere, eh? (- -___)
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Tradition of having a male first born? Do they science it in or something? Or do they just purposely prefer to mate with people who have male tendencies in the family or something? If that's the case, yeah, that's pretty messed up.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was aware of the rural area exception. At first I didn't really get it, but I imagine the problem seems a lot bigger on major cities than it does in rural areas so it makes sense. I think?
Ah, I suppose "first born" is technically the wrong term. I think "first child" would be more appropriate.
DeleteLet me put it to you this way:
1) They didn't have the technology to perform abortions back then and even if they did they didn't they have sonograms to determine the sex of the child while still in the womb anyway.
2) There's another Chinese (or Asian) tradition of the One-Month Celebration. After giving birth the mother and child stay indoors for a month to allow the mother time to recuperate from the ordeal and the child to grow a little stronger before exposure to the world. After the month of confinement, if the child survived (infant mortality rates back in the day were high everywhere, China no exception) then the child would be 'introduced' to everyone else during the celebration. If the infant expires behind the closed doors before a month is up, well, no one would have performed an autopsy.
A female might have been first *born* but the first child that family would have reared would be a male, no matter what. You get what I'm saying here?
It's a part of history Chinese don't like to talk about, for obvious reasons. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the younger generations didn't know about it at all.
That's odd! I'm sure that wont be a good thing in the long run!
ReplyDeleteYeah! That's what I was trying to say! Glad you caught that! Thanks!
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Wow, I didn't think the ratio was so uneven! I did not know they took the one child policy thing so serious. D:
ReplyDeleteThank you for the informative read!
The limited resources really make things difficult.
DeleteWell I didn't know that the One Child Policy could be worked around. Anyway, I say we just increase homosexuality in China. These extra boys won't need mates then. Problem solved. A problem is though that the problem would still exist if there were too many women instead of too many men. The only way it wouldn't exist is if there were pretty much exactly the same numbers. I'm also not sure of the effectiveness of the One Child policy, it doesn't seem to be stemming overpopulation at all.
ReplyDeleteYou should know that there's no way to foment homosexuality, anymore than there's a way to "scare straight" a gay.
DeleteYou're wrong. The problem would not exist if there were too many women.
I have to say, this isn't one of your more well thought out comments, Mark.
It's done a good job stemming overpopulation. If you are thinking that 'no overpopulation at all' is the only indicator that the policy works, then you should curb your expectations. Every two people (husband and wife) having one child, that means the successive generation will only be about half the size of the previous. The only problem is the old generation is living too damn long. Pesky medical breakthroughs....
does this mean that china will have more gay men? ;P
ReplyDeleteI don't see how you came to that conclusion. Though that would solve a lot of the burden on population growth.
DeleteThat's really crazy.
ReplyDeleteYep.
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