Homestead mailing list

[tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

tvoivozhd---in China for thousands of years it has been a cultural 
obligation for sons to take care of aging parents---the obligation is 
financial---the son's wife does all the nursing home work, never 
mentioned in a patriarchical society.  Dowries will vanish as the value 
of a bride rises and big social troubles lie ahead  with the growth of a 
huge herd of rogue elephants.

chicagotribune.com <http://www.chicagotribune.com/>       


 In China, it's a boy-boy-boy-girl world


   Culture favors males, but growing gender imbalance could spark
   violence, economic woes, experts fear

        *Advertisement*
                

By Michael A. Lev
Tribune foreign correspondent

January 30, 2005

HAINAN ISLAND, China -- Anyone paying attention would notice something 
odd about the elementary schools here. What the government and parents 
are awakening to--belatedly--is the danger inherent in what they see.
lie

Boy-boy-boy-girl they scampered.

Boy-boy-boy-girl they lined up.

In one 3rd-grade class, a parent noted, there are 50 students, but only 
12 or 13 girls.

The same imbalance can be found at other schools on the island.

"There are 56 kids in my class but only 15 girls," said 9-year-old Zhu 
De Zhao, a boy.

"There are 62 kids in my class but only 16 girls," said 9-year-old boy 
Wei Gang Jun.

A normal sex ratio at birth should be about 106 males per 100 females, 
but in China about 120 boys are born for every 100 girls. On culturally 
conservative Hainan Island, the ratio is above 130 boys to 100 girls.

The sex balance is seriously out of skew because of a strong cultural 
preference for boys and a population-control policy that limits most 
urban couples to one child and rural couples to two. There is also easy 
access to ultrasound machines and abortions, so when mothers learn they 
are pregnant with a girl, many are tempted to terminate and try again.

Too many bachelors

The fear is that too many boys today means too many bachelors in the 
future, which also means too many unhappy, unattached men looking for a 
place to fit in. If this is true, researchers warn, it's not hard to 
predict a startling increase in violent activity that could affect 
overall social stability and derail China's economic progress.

It is a scientifically provable theory, said political scientist Valerie 
Hudson of Brigham Young University. And it's backed up by what any high 
school graduate can recall: "When guys got together, did they sometimes 
do stupider and more reckless things than when they were alone?" she asked.

The phenomenon of too many boys could have been avoided, but the issue 
was overshadowed by China's overall exploding population. The one-child 
policy, initiated in the 1980s, gets credit for preventing the addition 
of 300 million people to China's population of 1.3 billion.

Now the government is waking up to the gender gap. China's leaders have 
begun highlighting the problem and taking initial steps to prevent 
sex-selection abortions. But significant progress won't occur unless 
China can change its ingrained preference for boys. If that seems 
unlikely in the short term, a better solution will be to relax 
population-control regulations to allow parents more chances to have a 
boy, said Li Yongping, a demographer at Peking University.

"People want a boy," Li said. "In the villages, having a boy means 
status. If you don't have one, you are looked down on by your neighbors. 
. . . That's the culture."

The first steps to address the issue have been small. Using ultrasound 
machines solely to detect the sex of a fetus was banned years ago, but 
on Hainan it is now a criminal offense. In Guiyang City on the mainland, 
all ultrasounds including those for health reasons have been banned 
after the 14th week of pregnancy, when sex can be determined.

But bans are easy to circumvent. When women want a boy and are willing 
to pay for the information, ultrasounds take place: a discreet nod from 
the operator tells parents what they want to know.

Li said there are some pilot programs in place to promote the value of 
having girls, or to give money to families without sons, but the only 
way to make progress is to permit parents more chances to have a boy. In 
his discussions with the State Family Planning Commission, Li said 
officials have signaled a willingness to consider relaxing the one-child 
policy.

The preference for boys "can't be changed by economic policies," Li said.

Male preference runs deep

The reasons for male preference run deep. It begins with the desire to 
carry on the family line. But in China--an ancient, traditional agrarian 
society--families need boys to tend the fields. Sons also care for their 
aging parents. Women are married off to their husbands' villages. Thus, 
a family with no sons is imperiled.

While China is urbanizing and its economy advancing, in the vast 
countryside there is still no government social safety net to replace 
the role of the son. Particularly in tradition-bound areas such as the 
southern island of Hainan, the preference for boys remains almost 
unquestioned.

The painful irony of the situation is that parents, in their zeal to 
have boys who will assume the role of family provider and protector, may 
find those valued sons moving away in search of a spouse. "I'm worried 
about my son," said one mother of a Ying Cai school student. "When he 
grows up there will be very difficult competition to find a wife."

Concerns also have been raised that such desperation for wives will lead 
to trafficking of women.

An exploration of the dangers of a gender imbalance was made in the book 
"Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male 
Population." Co-written by Hudson of BYU, the book concluded that China 
will have about 30 million unmarriable men in 20 years. They will be, 
almost literally, looking for trouble.

These "bare branches," as they are known in Chinese, will be the least 
eligible bachelors, "losers in societal competition," the authors put 
it. Poor, under-educated and unattached, they will be outsiders and 
therefore at greater risk to fall afoul.

The book connects studies that show the preponderance of violence in 
society is committed by males 15 to 35 years old, and that unmarried men 
are far more likely to commit murder and rape. Being disadvantaged is 
another risk factor, exacerbated by the fact that outsiders tend to band 
together, and men in groups are more likely to exhibit antisocial behavior.

The crucial factor is the effect of bachelorhood on behavior. "The 
reason that's important is that only when they are married do they begin 
to have a stake in a system of law and order that will protect their 
loved ones," Hudson said.

One question is whether the responsibility bred into Chinese men to care 
for their parents would be strong enough to mitigate their feelings of 
alienation. It may be that urban men, whose parents are more likely to 
have pensions, are more likely to go off the rails than rural men, who 
will continue to feel responsible for their parents' well-being. Hudson 
also pointed out that nothing would stop bare branches engaging in 
criminal activity from sending money home to their parents.

She also cautioned that the theory only identifies risk factors; it does 
not predict what will happen. But the book highlights one intriguing 
historical precedent.

In the 1850s in northern China, after decades of flood, drought and 
starvation in which families turned to female infanticide to save money 
and increase their security, as many as 25 percent of the men were 
unable to marry. Some of these men organized into small criminal gangs 
that eventually combined into small armies.

At its peak, the Nien Rebellion included as many as 100,000 of these 
bare branches who were in at least nominal control of territory 
inhabited by 2 million to 6 million people.

It took years for the Qing Dynasty to put down the rebellion.

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune <http://www.chicagotribune.com/>