Eighty-five percent of Chinese people are perturbed by the
mounting gender imbalance in the country, according to a poll by
the China Youth Daily and QTick.com.
Out of 2,603 respondents from 29 provinces and municipalities,
as much as 88 percent of people from rural areas said they were
worried about the extent to which males outnumbered females.
China's male population outnumbers that of females by 37
million, the most uneven in the world, of which males aged between
zero and 15 are 18 million more than females, the China Youth
Daily quoted government statistics as saying.
Statistics from the Information Office of the State Council show
the sex ratio for newborns is 119 boys to 100 girls and the figure
is more alarming in provinces such as Jiangxi, Guangdong, Anhui and
Henan, where it stands at 130 to 88.
Tian Jianguo, a 68-year-old respondent, said, "How can my
grandson find a wife in the future?"
Officials from the central government are concerned about the
social problems brought by the gender imbalance, which reduces
millions of males to bachelors each year around the country, the
China Youth Daily reported.
Crimes such as abduction of women and human-trafficking are
haunting the areas with the greatest gender imbalance, an official
from the State Family Planning Commission said recently.
Sex-selection abortions aided by ultrasonic scanning was blamed
by the respondents as the main cause for China's gender
imbalance.
Over 15 percent of respondents said many of their relatives and
friends had used ultrasonic scanning to select the sex of their
babies.
(China Daily July 18, 2007)