In my response to Maggie Coleman's post of the NYT article about the
"slaughter of girl babies" in China I said the one-child policy was
reactionary, but that one-sided reports were no better. By one-sided
reports I meant those that ignored other plausible explanations for the
recorded gap in the number of girls and boys, explanations that the
anti-communist, anti-chinese and anti-choice lobbies like to *avoid*.
I am no expert on demography or China. I just think that recognizing the
political context of these kinds of reports is the beginning of wisdom.
I looked at the article by Greenhalgh and Li cited in the NYT (in
the Spring '95 _Signs_). They say they cannot rule of any of several possible
grounds for the missing girls *except* the under-reporting argument. But
the two reasons they offer for this are the level of social control in
China, and that the birth cadre in their study area (and they emphasize
she was a "longstanding friend" of the researchers) strongly denied the
under-reporting.
The sex gap is a serious question; IMHO their's is not
a serious response. Especially since it makes no effort to respond to the
evidence in the article described below, which they cite.
Zang et all (_Population and Development Review_ 19:2 283, 1993) try to
evaluate the weight of the major possible explanations for missing girls.
They conclude that in the second half of the 1980s, non-reporting of girls
accounts for between 43% and 75% of the sex gap. They specifically reject
the claims that female infanticide and abandonment are major contributing
factors. Sex-selective abortion faciliatated by the introduction of
ultrasound technology is considered the other major factor (despite it
being strictly illegal in China for medical personnel to tell parents the
sex of a foetus).
Zang et all quote a 1991 study by Johansen and Nygrem? that estimates
that adopted children whose birth was not reported account for
half the missing girls in the 1980s. Zang et all also explain why
they disagree with the arguments of Judith Bannister of the US Census
Bureau that the change in sex ratios by age groups indicates high female
mortality due to neglect (if I understood it right, this was one of Maggie
Coleman's reasons for rejecting the under-reporting argument).
The evidence for infanticide in the often-cited John Aird's _Slaughter of
the Innocents_ is *very* thin. A typical example is the report by a fifth
year medical student in Canada that his brother is a doctor in China and
routinely killed new-born girls. Not one *name*, which partly
understandable given repression in China, but even more so when you see it
is published by the American Enterprise Institute, that bastion of
political neutrality. The American who did volunteer work at an
orphanage and saw girl bodies "carted out in wheebarrows" in the NYT
article was also not named. When I first read the article I wondered if
it might have been Ms. Right-to-Life.
The Pulitzer Prize winner _China Wakes_ by Kristof and Wudunn (the latter
of Chinese descent) discusses this issue. After reviewing
the disturbing data suggesting that up to 1.7 million girls go
missing annually they say: "This does not mean, of course, that 1.7
million girls are killed each year. The majority are probably born safely
but simply never reported to the authorities." Kristof and Wudunn also
highlight the role of ultrasound in sex-selected abortion, and have
previously written about forced abortion and sterilization in the US
press. For this they were reproached by organizations like the
(neo-Malthusian) Zero Population Growth. "On the other side of the
spectrum, the die-hard congressional critics of abortion were delighted
with our stories because they gave them tools with which to attack China."
Wudunn rightly puts her objections to China's population policy in the
context of the very real difficulties faced. I think the policy is
reactionary for reasons that include those Coleman noted about what it
means for girls and women given social predjudice for boys. Unlike
Coleman, however, I would still distinguish between failure to report
girls and infanticide!
As I understand it, the CPC thought that if the 1978-5005 marriage
generation would the "sacrifice generation" and restrict themselves to one
child, the increase in female labour participation and reduction in social
expenditures would allow China by 2005 to have a standard of living
equivalent to that of countries who had already completed the classic
demographic transition. This level of affluence would then ensure
a more sustainable birth rate. As of 2005, as long as your parents had
one child, you will be allowed two. Minority nationalities (e.g. Tibet)
have always been exempt from the policy, at least officially.
A very ambitious plan, but a better example of Stalinism than
socialist democracy, IMHO. However, I also don't think it should ever be
forgotten how signficantly the social status of one-fifth of all the women
and girls in the world was raised by the Chinese revolution. Has any other
society done more in less time?
Bill Burgess
