Not enough women in china?!

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by miss khan, Dec 16, 2003.

  1. miss khan Registered Senior Member

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    I came across this info. while making a presentation for a class. Unbelievable:
    There are 111 million men in China (roughly 3x the population of Canada) who will never marry. Why? Because there aren't enough Chinese women!!! Why? Because they kill female infants like they're mosquitos!! I'm sorry I said that so lightly but its true. Female infanticide is RAMPANT in China (and India, Pakistan, some African countries..if you think about it) & even though their sons will never marry, they still don't end it!! I thought the whole concept of having sons vs. daughters was so they could carry on the family name.. but if the guy has no woman to marry.. ummm
    As a consequence, of this deficit of women, a huge slave trade has emerged where Vietnamese women are kidnapped & transported to China to serve as wives. Or, incestuous villages have emerged where almost every wedding is between a brother & sister or cousin & 1st cousin.

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  3. Bells Staff Member

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    I've heard about the female shortage in China and it's apparently such a problem that the Government is encouraging people to have daughters (or not to kill their daughters). They prefer male babies because they consider that their son will look after them in their old age, while the daughter would get married and not be able to care for them. Plus they think that the son would be paid more (again with the thought that he'd care for the parents), plus the family name notion which you mentioned, and also the fact that they consider son's more honourable and preferable to daughters... kind of like a prestige thing (again for selfish reasons of the parents).

    It's tragic that girls are either abandoned or dumped and worse still, killed at birth before the birth can be registered

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    . However now the Chinese Government is seeing a scary future where men outnumber women by such a majority that as you say, many wont marry and have children. I watched this documentary a few years ago where they were encouraging couples to not abort if it is a girl because of the population ratio. But it is the culture that a male baby is preferred. I watched that documentary with my dad and he was so horrified that it was one of the few times I ever saw him cry, especially when they showed the abandoned baby girls in the way they were treated, and also the fact that no one would adopt them because they were girls. It was heartbreaking. The producers of this documentary had snuck cameras into the orphanages and filmed how these little girls (mostly toddlers) were tied up all day on these benches with holes underneath them for when they went to the toilet, and they were fed on these benches and they even napped on them. They were never held or cuddled and no one ever played with them. My father still talks about that doco sometimes even now and the question he keeps asking is how and why. I guess for him he can't even consider how someone could do that to their own child.

    My mother used to be a school teacher in the country of my birth and she always told me this story of this little chinese boy in her class, she taught 7 year olds at the time. She told me how this little boy was really shy and rarely ever spoke. Then one day she during recess, she was outside on yard patrol and another little boy came screaming out of the toilet calling my mum over. Mum rushed over thinking someone was hurt and apparently this little boy had seen the chinese boy in the toilet (apparently the stall door had not closed properly) and he was sitting down on the seat to pee. My mum explained maybe he was doing number two's and the little boy said no, that the chinese boy was not a boy but a girl, and then he told my mum that he didn't have a peepee. My mum couldn't understand what was going on and another teacher came up and asked what was going on and when he heard he went into the bathroom. He came back out and told my mum to get the principal. Mum ran off and came back with the principal and the school nurse. They took the boy into the sick bay and after the school nurse spoke to him and asked him some questions, she came out and told the principal to call the boys parents and the police. The little boy was a little girl and she told the school nurse that she was a boy because her mummy had told her so, but she knew she was a girl because she saw she looked the same as her sisters. The father came in and when questioned by the police, my mum and the principal, he admitted that his wife had kind of lost her mind when after their 4th daughter she fell pregnant and thought this time it was going to be a boy, and it was a girl.. she wanted a boy because of the honour thing and chinese valued boys above girls. So to appease her and so she wouldn't lose her mind further, the father let her call the girl a boys name and let her treat bring up this girl as a boy. The police arrested both of them and apparently the mother was put away into a mental asylum (as they were called back then). The father was released, but lost custody of the kids. The child, along with her sisters were sent away to live with their grandparents, and last my mother heard before we immigrated to Australia, that the child was doing pretty well as a girl. My mother told me that apparently the mother so wanted a boy that she went this far to get one

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    , and my mum said to me that she was horrified as to how anyone could do that, but then she was told by many other teachers at the school where she taught that they'd heard of this happening before. She told me that she'd seen cases of child abuse and all of them tragic, but that one was the worst.




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  5. miss khan Registered Senior Member

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    hi bells!
    I wrote a response to you earlier but sciforums deleted it

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    WEll, here goes again:
    I think I know what documentary you're talking about. It was BBC's Deathroom (or something similar) about the living conditions in Chinese orphanages. It's so sad, that story you narrated. Stories like that are probably what account for some of the huge gap between the number of boys & girls born. A lot of girls are not registered by their parents because they refuse to accept their existence. I think that's a worse punishment than killing them off when they don't understand anything.

    I have a friend who was born in China and abandoned as an infant. She ended up in one of those crzy orphanages, but she got really lucky and was adopted by American parents. Her parents tell her that they had to perform the Heimlech (sp?) on her almost everyday the first 2 years they had her, because she ate so fast. The girls at the orphanage were never given enough time to finish eating (sounds like something out of David Copperfield) so they all developed dangerous chowing down speeds.

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    its kind of funny

    The whole problem with female infanticide stems directly from cultural values, like you said. If somehow by some miracle Chinese peasants were forced to swallow new cultural norms, Chinese society could end its baby-kiling ritual.

    But there's other countries too, just as bad. In inda, they had to ban ultrasound from hospitals because of the dramatic increase in female baby killing incidents after the intro of ultrasound into India. But nobody enforces the law

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    so female abortions are still the norm there.
     
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  7. miss khan Registered Senior Member

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    ( yay! it posted! )
     
  8. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    I wound not say it cultural, male babies are preferred virtually universally over females, even here in the states the remnant still remains of wanting to have boys over girls. It goes back to selfish genetics in which a male can conceive many more children then a women can, so it’s evolutionarily advantageous to have more male children.

    Last I heard it was like 8 boys to every girl in china

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    Its hards to believe it that bad.
     
  9. Ozymandias Unregistered User Registered Senior Member

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    I can't say anything without being redundant...but hey, that just means I can't say anything without repeating myself, eh?

    Yeah, simpler terms: Infant females get killed because there is a limit to how many children a family is allowed to have, and it's valued to have a boy -- they'll take care of you in your old age better, in theory. So, if you have a baby and it's not a boy...well, you want to get a boy, so that other baby goes down the tubes and you and spouse go back to bed.
     
  10. miss khan Registered Senior Member

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    143
    Why are you repeating what's already been said? Do you have anything new to add to the topic?

    Nope. In the US, more male babies are killed than female babies.
     
  11. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Really can you reference that?
     
  12. miss khan Registered Senior Member

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  13. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    well I'll be a monkeys uncle

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    hum would like to know why they keep killing there children seems it has something to do with the fact that man do most of the killing. Even so the vast majority of infanticide in the world and in the animal kingdoms is still on females. There is always exceptions to a rule of biology.
     
  14. Dr Lou Natic Unnecessary Surgeon Registered Senior Member

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    There aren't too few women in china, there are too many men.

    And on the subject of baby girls being strapped to benches; fact is, asians are sadistic horrible people.
    They go out of their way to cause as much pain and suffering as possible.
    Oh yeah, this is racist, well... there you go :shrug:
     
  15. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    If you said on average asian culture is sadistic and horrible, that would not be racist, culturist but not racist.
     
  16. yinyinwang Registered Senior Member

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    miss khan:
    I am living in China now and the problem does exist but it happens mainly in the rural area. I personally know a case of a family having 7 girls and 1 boy, they just wanted to have a boy after having seven girls. It is the rural tradition to have man of labor to serve the family. Or they kill girl babies and now they are equiped with ultrasonic to decide which gender to have without having too many girls before. the rural population accounts for 70% of the whole population. It is out of balance and create all sorts of social disasters. With the present commie government, I can't vision any good way out of this.

    Dr Lou Natic:
    "asians are sadistic horrible people. "
    After experiencing so much abusive life myself, I agree that there are a lot of such bad guys and bad way of behaviors. But not every one of them is the same. The social study on this is done by me but it is in Chinese. I would put it into a major arguement that because of the bad government that encourage such abusive society to keep a few in power, so the only solution to this is a restoration of human values in the government.

    I think the world will finally appreciate what the US is doing in the ME despite of the present resistance.
     
  17. miss khan Registered Senior Member

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    143
    alright, i dunno.. what China's supposed to do to solve its problems

    "The female shortage in China is only worsening. In 2000,900,000 fewer female births were recorded than should have been, based on male births. In 1990 the shortfall was 500,000. Some of that owes to parents giving up daughters for adoption without registering their birth. But population experts at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing estimate that up to one-third of the girls are missing because of gender-based abortions. Rural Chinese women also tend to breast-feed girls for shorter periods, providing less hope for survival. Chinese demographers estimate that in some rural areas, 80% of children from ages 5 to 10 are boys.

    In Shaanxi's Qiaogou village, children play under a dusty apple tree. The noise is the raucous glee of boys being boys. There is only one girl among them. Asked what he thinks his future will hold, Xiaochun, 7, replies, "I'll get married and be a good farmer, of course." Where will he get a wife? "I think in other villages far away, there are many more girls," Xiaochun says. "I will get my wife from there." Across China, millions of boys are hoping the same thing, but only a few will ever meet the woman of their dreams.

    Liu Dehai never imagined he would marry his shy first cousin Hai. Though intramarriage was common in imperial days, it is taboo in modem China. But at age 20, with his friends already paired off, Liu found himself the odd man out. His parents, farmers in the village of Nanliang in Shaanxi province, could not raise the $2,000 required to attract a woman to Nanliang to marry their son. With so many men to choose from, women are loath to settle in hardscrabble villages like Nanliang. Desperate, Liu's mother contacted her sister and requested a favor: Could she ask Hal to be Liu's bride? Young women like Hai are not apt to defy their parents. And so Liu and Hai were wed."

    From: "With women so scarce, what can men do?" Its from an old Time magazne.
     
  18. guthrie paradox generator Registered Senior Member

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    Nasty situation debveloping. Maybe its the way societies ope with overpopulaiton. Either theyll go and have a great big war in which the boys can get killed, or else homosexuality will beome state sponsored policy.
     
  19. sargentlard Save the whales motherfucker Valued Senior Member

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    It also goes by the name of ignorance

    Imagine getting a date, especially as a geek.

    This maybe strictly due to natural factors. Not planned murder of the infant....i seriously doubt otherwise. Or for the same reasons they are killed in China.

    Only thing you can really do is educate people and "hope" for this to stop....its weaksauce but there isn't any physical measuresagainst this, especially in countries where undeveloped lands stray away from the national law and work on their own code of law (India for example)
     
  20. yinyinwang Registered Senior Member

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    SD
    /Only thing you can really do is educate people and "hope" for this to stop....its weaksauce but there isn't any physical measuresagainst this, especially in countries where undeveloped lands stray away from the national law and work on their own code of law (India for example)/

    Education does take many forms, putting in a prison is also a way of education besides as a punishment.
    I wish it was not just sitting and talking and shrugging.
     
  21. Vortexx Skull & Bones Spokesman Registered Senior Member

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    ...And still despite infanticide and lack of females, china manages to have the largest population ?????

    how can? Does a female have to produce 8 boys before she can retire ?

    This in a funny way reminds me of the US trade deficit, if the boys are suposed to take care for their old parents, all these boys need another 8 boys to take care for their pension while the female deficit is getting larger and larger!

    This cannot continue forever? Hide your females, the chinese are coming to take our females

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    Last edited: Dec 22, 2003
  22. yinyinwang Registered Senior Member

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    The problem happens when the population is getting large enough. Or yes, the chinese girls are in favor of foriegners and that left the deficit even worse.
     
  23. Dr Lou Natic Unnecessary Surgeon Registered Senior Member

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    Thankfully no women on earth like asian men. Do you ever hear about a girl who has a "thing" for asian men? Do you ever see a non asian woman with an asian man? the answer to both of those questions is no.
    Whats weird is it seems that what few chinese women are left are all coming to live in my city to fornicate with whites and blacks, chinese men are following them here and finding themselves to be single for the rest of their lives.
    Probably because, as the old saying goes, "nobody wants to fuck an asian man"
    (well thats not entirely true, I had an uncle that liked to fuck young asian men)
     

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