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Some 30-40 million marriage-age men in China would live a
singles life by 2020 if the practice of CT gender screening in the
embryo stage is not held in check, said Li Weixiong, vice-chairman
of the population, resources and environment committee of the
national committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference.
"This is by no means a sensational prediction," said Li. "The
great disparities between male and female newborns mean a serious
threat to building a well-off society."
"The disproportion of male to female has become more and more
serious, especially in the rural areas," Li said in a keynote
speech at a full meeting of the on-going CPPCC annual session,
which opened here last Wednesday.
Li quoted the figures of previous population censuses as saying
that the newborn gender ratio was 100:108.5 in 1982, 100:111.3 in
1990 and 100:116.9 in 2000 in the country as a whole but it reached
as high as more than 100:130 in Hainan and Guangdong. Whereas the
normal proportion is 100:104-107. If the situation is allowed to
continue unchecked, there would be 30-40 million marriage-age men
who would go singles all their lives by 2020.
"Such serious gender disproportion poses a major threat to the
healthy, harmonious and sustainable growth of the nation's
population and would trigger such crimes and social problems as
mercenary marriage, abduction of women and prostitution," Li
said.
The policy advisors attributed the grave situation to the
centuries-old feudalistic ideas, sophisticated medical testing
means and the lagging social security system in the countryside.
Although China has the maternal and child care law and family
planning law, which forbid embryo gender screening, Li said. they
have little effect.
He urged the government to adopt a combination of legal,
economic, educational and cultural measures to lower the birth
proportion of male to female.
(Xinhua News Agency March 8, 2004)
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