![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||||
![]() |
![]() |
You are in: World: Asia-Pacific | ||||||
![]() |
![]() |
Thursday, 23 August, 2001, 21:18 GMT 22:18 UK
China's unwanted girls
![]() Boys are considered much more useful than girls
By Adam Brookes in Beijing
On the garbage dumps that surround Beijing, scavengers from time to time will find a newborn baby girl amid the stinking refuge. Sometimes she is still alive.
She brought them all home to her one-room brick shack and she and her husband try to give them a chance. In China, couples are permitted one, at most two, children. Too frequently a girl is a disappointment. Thrown away Every year, say researchers, perhaps a million girl foetuses are aborted and tens of thousands of girl babies are abandoned.
"I was the only one who would pick her up. I couldn't bear to see her die. "Parents shouldn't throw away their children. This shouldn't be happening." Community pressure But Chinese society is throwing away its little girls at an astounding rate. For every 100 girls registered at birth, there are now 118 little boys - in other words, nearly one seventh of Chinese girl babies are going missing. "Some of those girls are alive, they are just not registered," says Professor Zhai Zhenwu, of Beijing's People's University. "Some are abandoned, but many are aborted when the parents find out the foetus is a girl.
"That number rises by 1.5 million every year. "It will bring crime and prostitution. It will destabilise China." Jhiu Hongying is 19 and pregnant. The pressure on her to produce a boy is huge. Family and community demand it. A boy will bring status. He will continue the family line. "Boys are the best, because they can work," says the girl's mother, Zhang Hongying. "They're stronger. "If my daughter has a son, everyone will celebrate. "All the neighbours want her child to be a boy." At a Beijing temple, women come to pray that the foetus in their womb is that of a boy. Chinese tradition despises the girl child. This powerful cultural preference for sons is heightened by the one-child policy. The result - millions of nameless baby girls in China are simply disappearing.
|
![]() |
See also:
![]() Internet links:
![]() The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Asia-Pacific stories now:
![]() ![]() Links to more Asia-Pacific stories are at the foot of the page.
![]() |
![]() |
Links to more Asia-Pacific stories
|
![]() |
![]() |
^^ Back to top News Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Entertainment | Talking Point | In Depth | AudioVideo ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To BBC Sport>> | To BBC Weather>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © MMIII | News Sources | Privacy |