Deng Xiaoping’s ambitious One Child Policy succeeded in preventing 400 million births, and can therefore be seen as a great success. The growth promoted by Chairman Mao to build a great China was unsustainable and something had to be done. However, the ramifications of the policy have caused some of the most shocking and damaging trends that China has experienced in recent years. The most visible up until now has been the mass adoption of abandoned female babies overseas, but growing ever more relevant is the gender imbalance that will see 24 million “extra” men by the year 2020. The traditional preference for male children to carry on the family line has seen sex-selective abortion, abandonment and infanticide in favour of boys, skewing the male to female ratio. In China, there are 120 boys born for every 100 girls, while the rate for industrialised nations is 107:100. In the case of second children (in rural areas, families with a girl are permitted to “try again” for a boy), the ratio is even more disturbing: 143 boys born for every 100 girls. The government’s census department predicts that by 2040, the population under the age of 40 will consist of 300 million men and 250 million women.

Rise in prostitution and forced marriage

The government-sponsored Chinese Academy of Social Sciences admits that the gender imbalance is the most serious demographic problem facing the country at the moment. With the One Child Policy set to continue at least until 2015, things show little sign of abating, despite government propaganda designed to promote the qualities of baby girls. It will take far more than a well-meaning poster to reverse generations of male-preference.

One unavoidable upshot of the gender imbalance is a generation of bachelors, known as “bare branches” in China because they will never have a family tree. While some of these single men will be satisfied with their lot, many will seek alternatives, and this is where problems are already arising. Prostitution is a huge business in China. The World Health Organization places the number of sex workers at four million, but the true figure is doubtlessly much higher. Prostitution is illegal in China, but the level of corruption at local and government levels mean that bathhouses and brothels exist on every street in every city and town. As well as native women, China’s prostitutes include women from abroad, including Vietnam and South Korea. The industry looks set to increase even more as a generation of wifeless men comes of age in the near future.

The repercussions of the gender imbalance are already visible in many parts of China. In rural areas, forced marriage is common, with women being snatched from their villages and transported to other parts of the country to marry men they have never met. In rare cases these trafficked wives manage to escape, but the vast majority are coerced into living their lives as chattel. Some men look overseas for wives, accepting trafficked women from Burma, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea. Vietnam and Myanmar currently top the list of destinations. The majority of human trafficking out of Myanmar consists of women being smuggled into China. Case in point, in January 2010 a man from Nanjing spent 35,000 RMB on a Vietnamese wife. Many Vietnamese women are trafficked from Lao Cai to Hekou County in China’s Yunnan Province to work as prostitutes in brothels.

Changes to social mores

The imbalance could prove to be a Pyrrhic victory for gay rights activists, since the abundance of single men may change deep-seated attitudes and prejudices towards homosexuality. Two gay men who may previously have been pressured into marrying women might be permitted to continue their relationship, since there are so few females.

Another result may be inter-generational marriages, whereby young men marry women twenty or thirty years older than them, from the cohort that was not so severely affected by the One Child Policy. For older women who would otherwise have been “left on the shelf”, considered to be past their prime if still unmarried after the age of 30, the surplus of younger men unable to find a wife in their own age group may provide opportunities for coupling.

As well as personal implications for these generations of wifeless men, China may suffer as an economic power as its population ages. With the way things are unfolding, sociologists predict that the nation’s economic needs will not be met going forward. In their 2003 study, Cai Yong and William Lavely predicted a 14% drop in China’s population over the following hundred years. They also stressed the shocking implications of a generation of women who were never born: “The reproductive potential of the missing [women] is lost to all future generations.”

Another positive implication of the gender imbalance is the growing acceptance that having a daughter is not a negative thing. As China moves away from feudal mores towards a more globally influenced future, adherence to Confucian family ideals and concept of ancestor worship will dwindle. It will take several generations for the demographic to even out, but if couples realise the error of terminating a healthy pregnancy simply because the foetus is female, there is a chance of redressing the imbalance. 

Although the long term effects are yet to be felt, what’s clear is that China’s gender imbalance is the result of poorly evaluated government policy. A scheme like the One Child Policy did not take into consideration China’s age-old preference for male children, and no amount of girl-friendly propaganda seems to have made a difference so far. Although the policy was successful in preventing 400 million births and halting unsustainable population growth, it has crafted a demographic that is harmfully skewed. This ought to be a lesson.
 

Related links
A Need for Change? China’s Aging Population and the One Child Policy
More Kids, More Careers: Relax the One Child Policy?
Feminism and the Wobbly Bridge to Gender Equality in China

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Keywords: One Child Policy social implications of one child policy gender imbalance in China impacts of One Child Policy in China