2 interesting news bits on China/India/Pakistan

[c1ue]

http://the-diplomat.com/indian-decad...sy-china-ties/

It’s clear now that unless there are any dramatic new developments, China will follow through with its plan to export two power reactors to Pakistan. Further confirmation of this is set to come when Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari travels this week to Muslim-dominated Ning Xia to watch joint Sino-Pak counter-terrorism military exercises with the Chinese leadership.

Zardari will get a unique opportunity to push the deal with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao when he visits the country from July 6. The United States has said the deal needs the approval of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, but China insists it’s grandfathering it from one signed with Pakistan before it joined the NSG in 2004.

China has been pressing Pakistan to act against Uighur separatists and the nuclear deal is meant to offer a further incentive to Pakistan. What may also work to Pakistan’s advantage is that the deal has become a point of pride for China, which doesn’t want to be seen to be backing down under the pressure of another great power.

India has very limited options for scuttling the deal now. It’s not an NSG member (although it wants to be one), and so far, it has tried but failed in its efforts with the US and like-minded NSG countries to put a roadblock on the deal.

It seems China’s growing economic and political clout is proving hard and harder to counter.

http://the-diplomat.com/indian-decad...vies-face-off/

The Chinese Navy confronted an Indian naval ship in the South China Sea in July, demanding to know why the Indian vessel was in Chinese territory despite the incident appearing to take place in what are widely regarded as international waters, reports today are suggesting.

The face-off, which took place on July 22, is expected to heighten tensions in the often awkward relationship between Delhi and Beijing.

According to reports, the amphibious assault vessel INS Airavat was radioed by an unidentified Chinese naval vessel as it left Vietnamese waters. CNN-IBN reports that the Airavat was 45 nautical miles from Vietnam’s coast and heading towards the port of Haiphaong. ‘An unidentified caller who claimed to be from the Chinese Navy, but who was speaking in English, told INS Airavat that the Indian ship was entering Chinese waters and they must leave,’ according to IBN.

China has been engaged in a sometimes intense and long-running row with its Southeast Asian neighbours about ownership of the South China Sea, with China’s expansive claims disputed most notably by Vietnam and the Philippines. Indeed, Vietnam raised the stakes in June, calling on the United States and others to step in and help find some kind of resolution after a number of confrontations. But this may be the first time that China has directly challenged India.

India’s External Affairs Ministry, which normally remains tight-lipped over reported spats with China, moved to play down the incident, saying that the Airavat was in international waters, while denying that a confrontation took place.

The ministry statement said: ‘The Indian Naval vessel, INS Airavat, paid a friendly visit to Vietnam between July 19 to 28, 2011. On July 22, INS Airavat sailed from the Vietnamese port of Nha Trang towards Haiphaong, where it was to make a port call. At a distance of 45 nautical miles from the Vietnamese coast in the South China Sea, it was contacted on an open radio channel by a caller identifying himself as the “Chinese Navy” stating that “you are entering Chinese waters.” No ship or aircraft was visible from INS Airavat, which proceeded on her onward journey as scheduled. There was no confrontation involving the INS Airavat.’

Still, news of the incident will be an unwelcome development for an Indian government currently distracted by domestic strife, with the Manmohan Singh embroiled in what seems like an endless stream of corruption scandals and periodic stand-offs with civil society, notably those led by activist Anna Hazare.

The question for the Singh government is how to respond to an increasingly assertive China. This wouldn’t be the first time that tensions have flared in the past couple of years and comes as India has announced plans for the formation of a new strike corps aimed specifically at being able to hit targets inside China in the event of conflict breaking out.

The formation of the new strike corps has been under consideration for the last two years, but has only now been confirmed. According to Trefor Moss, writing here last week, it’s reported that it will focus on the eastern end of the contested border to bolster India’s defence of Arunachal Pradesh (what China calls Southern Tibet), as do the two new mountain divisions numbering 35,000 troops that the Indian Army has already raised. These are based in Nagaland and Assam, just south of the disputed province. However, the strike corps will consist of a further 40,000 troops, and its presence will significantly alter the Himalayan dynamic, with Indian forces in the region previously adopting a more defensive posture.

The July incident, meanwhile, raises key questions about the extent to which China will push its claims in the South China Sea. The United States has indicated that it supports freedom of navigation in the region, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered Beijing last summer with her remarks at an ASEAN meet in Hanoi that the peace and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is in the US national interest.

Certainly it seems to be a view echoed by India. The External Affairs Ministry statement on the July incident also carried a key observation: ‘India supports freedom of navigation in international waters, including in the South China Sea, and the right of passage in accordance with accepted principles of international law. These principles should be respected by all.'

[jk]

Re: 2 interesting news bits on China/India/Pakistan

interesting indeed. thanks, c1ue.

[sunpearl71]

Re: 2 interesting news bits on China/India/Pakistan

+1!

[lakedaemonian]

Re: 2 interesting news bits on China/India/Pakistan

Vietnam(A Chinese historical enemy/competitor) is tooling up it's navy with a purchase of some Russian Kilo class subs.

The Indian Navy is likely to be doing the training.

Could be related to the naval intercept.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: 2 interesting news bits on China/India/Pakistan

http://defense-studies.blogspot.com/...submarine.html

This is the first news I've seen of India/Vietnam partnering to counter China....much as China/Pakistan partner to counter India.

Seems like a natural "enemy of my enemy" partnership fit.

[llanlad2]

Chinese article calls for war in South China Sea

I don't know if this has been posted before but this potential war thing is certainly getting interesting/scary. The below is an article from the Global Times which is a "tabloid mouthpiece of the Communist Party" according to one analyst who gives his opinion (worth reading) here. I just happened across his analysis so can't vouch for the rest of the website.

The original article basically calls for the Chinese to use force to take back the resources that are rightfully theirs and to not waste time about it. Taiwan, along with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and China, claims sovereignty over archipelagos in the area, which are believed to have rich oil and natural gas resources.The comments are worth reading for a laugh in a voyeuristic sense. Plenty of responses from the Vietnamese readership and name calling.

Time to teach those around South China Sea a lesson
Global Times | September 29, 2011 19:55
By Long Tao

No South China Sea issue existed before the 1970s. The problems only occured after North and South Vietnam were reunified in 1976 and China’s Nansha and Xisha Islands then became the new country’s target.

Unfortunately, though hammered by China in the 1974 Xisha Island Battle and later the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, Vietnam’s insults in the South China Sea remained unpunished today. It encouraged nearby countries to try their hands in the “disputed” area and attracted the attention of the US so that a regional conflict gradually turned international.

China, concentrating on interior development and harmony, has been ultimately merciful in preventing such issue turning into a global affair so that regional peace and prosperity can be secured.

But it is probably the right time for us to reason, think ahead and strike first before things gradually run out of hands.

It seems all the countries around the area are preparing for an arms race.

Singapore brings home high-end stealth aircraft while Australia, India and Japan are all stockpiling arms for a possible “world-class” battle. The US, provoking regional conflict itself, did not hesitate to meet the demands of all of the above.

It’s very amusing to see some of the countries vow to threaten or even confront China with force just because the US announced that it has “returned to Asia.”
The tension of war is escalating second by second but the initiative is not in our hand. China should take part in the exploitation of oil and gas in South China Sea.
For those who infringe upon our sovereignty to steal the oil, we need to warn them politely, and then take action if they don’t respond.

We shouldn’t waste the opportunity to launch some tiny-scale battles that could deter provocateurs from going further.

By the way, I think it’s necessary to figure out who is really afraid of being involved in military activities. There are more than 1,000 oil and gas wells plus four airports and numerous other facilities in the area but none of them is built by China.

Everything will be burned to the ground should a military conflict break out. Who’ll suffer most when Western oil giants withdraw?

But out there could just be an ideal place to punish them. Such punishment should be restricted only to the Philippines and Vietnam, who have been acting extremely aggressive these days.

The Afghanistan and Iraq Wars have already set some bad examples for us in terms of the scale of potential battles, but the minnows will get a reality check by the art of our move.

Many scholars believe that the US presence in this area caused our inability to sort the mess out.

However, I think US pressure in the South China Sea should not be taken seriously, at least for now given the war on terror in the Middle East and elsewhere is still plaguing it hard.

The Philippines, pretending to be weak and innocent, declared that mosquitoes are not wary of the power of the Chinese elephant.

The elephant should stay restrained if mosquitoes behave themselves well. But it seems like we have a completely different story now given the mosquitoes even invited an eagle to come to their ambitious party. I believe the constant military drill and infringement provide no better excuse for China to strike back.

However, being rational and restrained will always be our guidance on this matter. We should make good preparations for a small-scale battle while giving the other side the option of war or peace.

Russia’s decisive move on Caspian Sea issues in 2008 proved that actions from bigger countries might cause a shockwave for a little while but will provide its region with long-term peace.

The author is the strategic analyst of China Energy Fund Committee

I also tracked down a different and what seems a better translation of the original article from a translation website which I've included below. It has some follow up material on how the article was received in China itself which points to the mood of the Chinese populace as a whole. (pretty much up for kicking ass by the sounds of it) with 99% wanting to take punitive action against the Phillipinos.


From South Sea Conversations

Tuesday’s Global Times carried an opinion piece titled ‘The present is a golden opportunity to use force in the South China Sea’. I thought the title would have just about said it all, and was therefore only going to offer some juicy excerpts, but as i read through it i found almost every sentence too good to leave out:

The internationalization of the South China Sea issue is perfectly clear, but it has not completely taken shape yet. The author believes now is a golden opportunity for China to coolly assess, grasp the opportunity, and take swift and definitive action.

At present every country is engaging in an arms race, procuring long-range maritime control weapons. Even Singapore, which is not part of the South China sea dispute, is preparing to introduce advanced stealth fighters. Australia and India’s military plans are in order to make world-class preparations, and Japan doesn’t want to be left behind either. America is energetically selling armaments with one hand and pouring petrol on the fire with the other, and at the same time is preparing to intervene militarily.

[. . .] One should not be afraid of small-scale wars, for they are a good way to release fighting potential. By fighting several small wars one can avoid a large war.

Speaking of war, we can look first at who should actually fear it. The South China Sea region has more than 1,000 oil and gas wells, but none of them belong to China. There are four airports in the Spratly Islands, but Mainland China does not have one. China has no other important economic installations. Leaving aside the issue of winning and losing, as soon as war commences the South China Sea will inevitably become a sea of fire. When those towering oil drilling platforms become flaming torches, who will be hurt the most? As soon as the fighting begins, all those Western oil and gas companies will inevitably withdraw, so who will lose the most?

As far as China is concerned, this is the best battleground. The author believes that in deploying force in the South China Sea we should reduce the attack area and lock down the Philippines and Vietnam, the two most vicious troublemakers, thus killing the chicken to warn the monkey [sha ji jing hou 杀鸡儆猴]. In terms of the scale of the war, it only needs to reach the objective of punishing the offenders: there is no need to copy America in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. This is a victorious war, so we should strike artistically, and it could become a great lesson in moral instruction.

The Philippines compares itself to a mosquito, saying it doesn’t fear the Chinese elephant, seeking sympathy from the world. Admittedly an elephant should not try to trample a mosquito, but should the mosquito bite the elephant? What is more, this “mosquito” has invited the “eagle” to help it along. The author believes that each country’s occupation of China’s sovereign territory, and their succession of large-scale military exercises has presented China with the perfect rationale for a decisive counterattack.

Rational, beneficial, segmented – these are still principles we must adhere to. With willingness for a large-scale war and actual preparation for a small-scale one, China should hand the choice between war and peace to its opponents, establishing a new image of China. As the experience of Russia in 2008 taking decisive action to rapidly stabilize the Caspian Sea situation shows, while actions by great powers may lead to shake up the international scene for a period of time, taking the long view we can see that this allows for the fundamental realization of regional stability and great-power strategic settlement, which is the blessing of world peace.

The author, Long Tao (龙韬), is listed as a “strategic analyst with the China Energy Fund Committee” (CEFC, Zhonghua Nengyuan Jijin Weiyuanhui), a self-proclaimed “non-profit, non-governmental think tank devoted to public diplomacy and researches on strategic issues with emphasis on energy and culture”. The concern with culture appears to be about building bridges with Islamic countries, presumably those blessed with significant oil reserves, but the Chinese version of the organization’s website appears more devoted to talking up the glory of China’s own culture with nationalist buzzwords like weida zhenxing (regeneration), jueqi (rise) and its minzu jingying (national elite). The CEFC actually states its mission to be “planning the future of the Chinese nation”. It may also have some rather leftist leanings, judging by banners like this one:

The English-language internet has almost no information besides the sketchy official website and a Facebook page (really!). No less than thirty-eight “consultants” are listed (among them, interestingly enough, is Mao Yushi, the economist who was subjected to online struggle by the Red Guards 2.0 earlier this year due to an essay he wrote pointing out Chairman Mao’s crimes), but there is no information about its founders or financial supporters. I’ve emailed some of the consultants and will post an update if i get any reply.**

The article was not far from the usual Global Times editorial line. In fact, it was not the first time the author Long Tao had made the case for war – he did so back in late June when the issue was last at its peak, mounting a frenzied attack on fellow GT commentator Wu Jianmin for equating restraint with self-confidence: “When the Korean War broke out in 1950 it was a Korean civil war,” Long Tao fumed, “China’s decision to send troops was obviously not ‘restrained’, so was that because the New China was not ‘self-confident?” This provoked a fiery 91,000-strong discussion on Phoenix – almost exclusively in support of the hardliner. This time around, however, Long Tao’s article was strangely absent on Phoenix. Netease carried it, but it somehow did not attract a single comment. On Sohu the piece seems to have hit the mark, with 72,000-odd participants.

This time around, an opposing viewpoint has been put forward on Xinhua by Sun Peisong of the Jiangsu Development Research Center. Sun argued for the idea of keeping conflicts “simmering” (ao 熬), which he described as a “Chinese form of wisdom” that the Communist Party’s great revolutionary leaders had deployed during World War II when the Japanese invaded. Sun’s argument seemed reasonable to me, but most of the 41,826 NetEase users who commented disagreed:

Mmm, I agree, simmer it till it becomes a pot of soup, then give it to the American masters of this “expert” [5680]

Haha~~~~The expert has come out to explain! When you lose your own land you can howl all you like but you’re still castrated [4355]

What sense does this make? How many countries have America, Britain and France bombed? When the South China Sea is being occupied by others, what use is it to be afraid of this or that? Some expert, go home and eat some potatoes. I’m a believer in striking when you should strike. Getting angry makes you sick. [3678]

[. . .]

As a kid who has grown up in our great military, I can’t believe this! Be realistic, take the initiative, abandon delusions and prepare for war. Of course, we want the war to be within our scope to control it, what is not ours we won’t touch, what is ours we will fight to retain the last inch (there may be some things that temporarily can’t be gained). Chinese people must be very clear: if you can’t win on the battlefield then you can’t win at the negotiating table. We love peace but we should not blindly retreat. In a just war, if you must fire the first shot then you do it, the more you delay, the more complicated the South China Sea dispute gets, and the probability of other great powers intervening increases. For peace we must struggle, for development we must struggle, for the dignity of the ancestral land [zuguo 祖国] and the Chinese nation we must struggle! For to avoid being despised by our offspring and future generations we must struggle! [2648]

I laughed to death bro, the absolute truth from the mouth of a real “brickspert” [zhuanjia 砖家]. Haha. “Hide our capabilities and wither!” [taoguang yangwei 韬光养萎]

CCTV has also hit back with a piece claiming that “war would be the worst choice”. However, that clearly served to enrage more people than it placated: the angry comments were flowing in at a rate of about 1 per minute before the whole comments section was suddenly disabled.

Add to that the recent online survey, to which more than 99% of respondents said they wanted to see the Philippines substantively punished, and it’s probably safe to say the South China Sea issue is approaching “wave” [chao 潮] proportions in China both in the media and online.

===

** Who would set up such an organization, and why would it be putting out arguments for war in the South China Sea? Presumably not China’s state-owned oil companies, Sinopec, PetroChina and CNOOC, since they already have significant development opportunities there and military conflict would only deprive them of the stability required for resource extraction. Might it have some connection with the PLA?

[c1ue]

Re: Chinese article calls for war in South China Sea

Interesting article, but more so because it is not exceptional in terms of Chinese young men's views on China's role in East Asia.

There is a relationship between demographic bulges of young men and warfare between nations.

[jk]

Re: Chinese article calls for war in South China Sea

Interesting article, but more so because it is not exceptional in terms of Chinese young men's views on China's role in East Asia.

There is a relationship between demographic bulges of young men and warfare between nations.

has there ever been a comparable demographic bulge of young men without an accompanying bulge of young women?

[FrankL]

Re: Chinese article calls for war in South China Sea

has there ever been a comparable demographic bulge of young men without an accompanying bulge of young women?

I need to learn to read better before posting

[c1ue]

Re: Chinese article calls for war in South China Sea

has there ever been a comparable demographic bulge of young men without an accompanying bulge of young women?

To my knowledge, no.

But then again, I would think that this makes the situation worse, not better.

On the other hand there are plenty of poorer nations around China to draw brides from.

In a real sense, the Arab Spring can also be at least partly attributed to large numbers of young men. In the more strict Muslim nations, the relative presence of young women is interdicted by economics and religion.

This area, which has seen little study, is one which needs to be understood better: how large groups act.

[jk]

Re: Chinese article calls for war in South China Sea

To my knowledge, no.

But then again, I would think that this makes the situation worse, not better.

On the other hand there are plenty of poorer nations around China to draw brides from.

In a real sense, the Arab Spring can also be at least partly attributed to large numbers of young men. In the more strict Muslim nations, the relative presence of young women is interdicted by economics and religion.

This area, which has seen little study, is one which needs to be understood better: how large groups act.

i agree: worse, not better. but your point about the availability of imported females from elsewhere in asia is a good one: it thins but spreads the pain.

[jpatter666]

Re: Chinese article calls for war in South China Sea

i agree: worse, not better. but your point about the availability of imported females from elsewhere in asia is a good one: it thins but spreads the pain.

Language and cultural differences would reduce this to a trickle IMO. It certainly happens, but no small part is kidnapped (or sold) women. We are certain on this -- my wife's old company is a worldwide NGO and in every country we were in bounding China this was one of the top problem areas; we often met with the local NGO country leads.

And you would know more c1ue, but isn't China still rather xenophobic when it comes to marriage?

[c1ue]

Re: Chinese article calls for war in South China Sea

And you would know more c1ue, but isn't China still rather xenophobic when it comes to marriage?

There are tens, if not hundreds of millions of ethnic Chinese in the areas just outside of China - particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

While certainly ethnic Chinese historically have tended to be significantly xenophobic, I cannot speak for the millions of 'clean slate' mainland Chinese males today.

When push comes to shove, usually inconvenient things like acceptable ethnicity for a wife (vs. no wife) is the one that gets changed.

So I guess my view is that there are both plenty of ethnic Chinese available and many societal views are plastic.

[touchring]

Re: Chinese article calls for war in South China Sea

There are tens, if not hundreds of millions of ethnic Chinese in the areas just outside of China - particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

While certainly ethnic Chinese historically have tended to be significantly xenophobic, I cannot speak for the millions of 'clean slate' mainland Chinese males today.

When push comes to shove, usually inconvenient things like acceptable ethnicity for a wife (vs. no wife) is the one that gets changed.

So I guess my view is that there are both plenty of ethnic Chinese available and many societal views are plastic.

Mainland Chinese males are even more xenophobic than overseas born Chinese. Don't talk about accepting someone from another race, most mainland Chinese won't even accept an ABC or any Chinese without a PRC passport. Even within PRC themselves, there is the issue of Northern and Southern Chinese, Chinese from different province, even Chinese from different cities. You know the Fujian province itself, there is a different language and customs every 50 miles. There are hundreds of sub-races within the Han race itself.

Among overseas Chinese, the Hakka or Kek people (a Han subrace) prefer to marry within themselves.

[llanlad2]

Re: Chinese article calls for war in South China Sea

Mainland Chinese males are even more xenophobic than overseas born Chinese. Don't talk about accepting someone from another race, most mainland Chinese won't even accept an ABC or any Chinese without a PRC passport. Even within PRC themselves, there is the issue of Northern and Southern Chinese, Chinese from different province, even Chinese from different cities. You know the Fujian province itself, there is a different language and customs every 50 miles. There are hundreds of sub-races within the Han race itself.

Among overseas Chinese, the Hakka or Kek people (a Han subrace) prefer to marry within themselves.

Interesting stuff. I am sure everyone reading this thread is aware of the one child policy- but China isn't the only country with/heading for a gender imbalance and and its attendant consequences.

http://www.economist.com/node/15636231

XINRAN XUE, a Chinese writer, describes visiting a peasant family in the Yimeng area of Shandong province. The wife was giving birth. “We had scarcely sat down in the kitchen”, she writes (see article), “when we heard a moan of pain from the bedroom next door…The cries from the inner room grew louder—and abruptly stopped. There was a low sob, and then a man’s gruff voice said accusingly: ‘Useless thing!’

“Suddenly, I thought I heard a slight movement in the slops pail behind me,” Miss Xinran remembers. “To my absolute horror, I saw a tiny foot poking out of the pail. The midwife must have dropped that tiny baby alive into the slops pail! I nearly threw myself at it, but the two policemen [who had accompanied me] held my shoulders in a firm grip. ‘Don’t move, you can’t save it, it’s too late.’

“‘But that’s...murder...and you’re the police!’ The little foot was still now. The policemen held on to me for a few more minutes. ‘Doing a baby girl is not a big thing around here,’ [an] older woman said comfortingly. ‘That’s a living child,’ I said in a shaking voice, pointing at the slops pail. ‘It’s not a child,’ she corrected me. ‘It’s a girl baby, and we can’t keep it. Around these parts, you can’t get by without a son. Girl babies don’t count.’”
In this section
»The worldwide war on baby girls
Haryana's lonely bachelors
Reprints
Related items
Mothers in China: Sobs on the night breeze
Mar 4th 2010
Distorted sex ratios in India: Haryana's lonely bachelors
Mar 4th 2010
Related topics
Economic development
Business
Economics
Asia-Pacific politics
Chinese politics

In January 2010 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) showed what can happen to a country when girl babies don’t count. Within ten years, the academy said, one in five young men would be unable to find a bride because of the dearth of young women—a figure unprecedented in a country at peace.

The number is based on the sexual discrepancy among people aged 19 and below. According to CASS, China in 2020 will have 30m-40m more men of this age than young women. For comparison, there are 23m boys below the age of 20 in Germany, France and Britain combined and around 40m American boys and young men. So within ten years, China faces the prospect of having the equivalent of the whole young male population of America, or almost twice that of Europe’s three largest countries, with little prospect of marriage, untethered to a home of their own and without the stake in society that marriage and children provide.

Gendercide—to borrow the title of a 1985 book by Mary Anne Warren—is often seen as an unintended consequence of China’s one-child policy, or as a product of poverty or ignorance. But that cannot be the whole story. The surplus of bachelors—called in China guanggun, or “bare branches”— seems to have accelerated between 1990 and 2005, in ways not obviously linked to the one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979. And, as is becoming clear, the war against baby girls is not confined to China.

Parts of India have sex ratios as skewed as anything in its northern neighbour. Other East Asian countries—South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan—have peculiarly high numbers of male births. So, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, have former communist countries in the Caucasus and the western Balkans. Even subsets of America’s population are following suit, though not the population as a whole.

The real cause, argues Nick Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, is not any country’s particular policy but “the fateful collision between overweening son preference, the use of rapidly spreading prenatal sex-determination technology and declining fertility.” These are global trends. And the selective destruction of baby girls is global, too.

Boys are slightly more likely to die in infancy than girls. To compensate, more boys are born than girls so there will be equal numbers of young men and women at puberty. In all societies that record births, between 103 and 106 boys are normally born for every 100 girls. The ratio has been so stable over time that it appears to be the natural order of things.

That order has changed fundamentally in the past 25 years. In China the sex ratio for the generation born between 1985 and 1989 was 108, already just outside the natural range. For the generation born in 2000-04, it was 124 (ie, 124 boys were born in those years for every 100 girls). According to CASS the ratio today is 123 boys per 100 girls. These rates are biologically impossible without human intervention.

The national averages hide astonishing figures at the provincial level. According to an analysis of Chinese household data carried out in late 2005 and reported in the British Medical Journal*, only one region, Tibet, has a sex ratio within the bounds of nature. Fourteen provinces—mostly in the east and south—have sex ratios at birth of 120 and above, and three have unprecedented levels of more than 130. As CASS says, “the gender imbalance has been growing wider year after year.”

The BMJ study also casts light on one of the puzzles about China’s sexual imbalance. How far has it been exaggerated by the presumed practice of not reporting the birth of baby daughters in the hope of getting another shot at bearing a son? Not much, the authors think. If this explanation were correct, you would expect to find sex ratios falling precipitously as girls who had been hidden at birth start entering the official registers on attending school or the doctor. In fact, there is no such fall. The sex ratio of 15-year-olds in 2005 was not far from the sex ratio at birth in 1990. The implication is that sex-selective abortion, not under-registration of girls, accounts for the excess of boys.


Other countries have wildly skewed sex ratios without China’s draconian population controls (see chart 1). Taiwan’s sex ratio also rose from just above normal in 1980 to 110 in the early 1990s; it remains just below that level today. During the same period, South Korea’s sex ratio rose from just above normal to 117 in 1990—then the highest in the world—before falling back to more natural levels. Both these countries were already rich, growing quickly and becoming more highly educated even while the balance between the sexes was swinging sharply towards males.

South Korea is experiencing some surprising consequences. The surplus of bachelors in a rich country has sucked in brides from abroad. In 2008, 11% of marriages were “mixed”, mostly between a Korean man and a foreign woman. This is causing tensions in a hitherto homogenous society, which is often hostile to the children of mixed marriages. The trend is especially marked in rural areas, where the government thinks half the children of farm households will be mixed by 2020. The children are common enough to have produced a new word: “Kosians”, or Korean-Asians.

China is nominally a communist country, but elsewhere it was communism’s collapse that was associated with the growth of sexual disparities. After the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, there was an upsurge in the ratio of boys to girls in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Their sex ratios rose from normal levels in 1991 to 115-120 by 2000. A rise also occurred in several Balkan states after the wars of Yugoslav succession. The ratio in Serbia and Macedonia is around 108. There are even signs of distorted sex ratios in America, among various groups of Asian-Americans. In 1975, calculates Mr Eberstadt, the sex ratio for Chinese-, Japanese- and Filipino-Americans was between 100 and 106. In 2002, it was 107 to 109.

But the country with the most remarkable record is that other supergiant, India. India does not produce figures for sex ratios at birth, so its numbers are not strictly comparable with the others. But there is no doubt that the number of boys has been rising relative to girls and that, as in China, there are large regional disparities. The north-western states of Punjab and Haryana have sex ratios as high as the provinces of China’s east and south. Nationally, the ratio for children up to six years of age rose from a biologically unexceptionable 104 in 1981 to a biologically impossible 108 in 2001. In 1991, there was a single district with a sex ratio over 125; by 2001, there were 46.

Conventional wisdom about such disparities is that they are the result of “backward thinking” in old-fashioned societies or—in China—of the one-child policy. By implication, reforming the policy or modernising the society (by, for example, enhancing the status of women) should bring the sex ratio back to normal. But this is not always true and, where it is, the road to normal sex ratios is winding and bumpy.

Not all traditional societies show a marked preference for sons over daughters. But in those that do—especially those in which the family line passes through the son and in which he is supposed to look after his parents in old age—a son is worth more than a daughter. A girl is deemed to have joined her husband’s family on marriage, and is lost to her parents. As a Hindu saying puts it, “Raising a daughter is like watering your neighbours’ garden.”

“Son preference” is discernible—overwhelming, even—in polling evidence. In 1999 the government of India asked women what sex they wanted their next child to be. One third of those without children said a son, two-thirds had no preference and only a residual said a daughter. Polls carried out in Pakistan and Yemen show similar results. Mothers in some developing countries say they want sons, not daughters, by margins of ten to one. In China midwives charge more for delivering a son than a daughter.

Chasing puppy-dogs’ tails


The unusual thing about son preference is that it rises sharply at second and later births (see chart 2). Among Indian women with two children (of either sex), 60% said they wanted a son next time, almost twice the preference for first-borns. This reflected the desire of those with two daughters for a son. The share rose to 75% for those with three children. The difference in parental attitudes between first-borns and subsequent children is large and significant.

Until the 1980s people in poor countries could do little about this preference: before birth, nature took its course. But in that decade, ultrasound scanning and other methods of detecting the sex of a child before birth began to make their appearance. These technologies changed everything. Doctors in India started advertising ultrasound scans with the slogan “Pay 5,000 rupees ($110) today and save 50,000 rupees tomorrow” (the saving was on the cost of a daughter’s dowry). Parents who wanted a son, but balked at killing baby daughters, chose abortion in their millions.

The use of sex-selective abortion was banned in India in 1994 and in China in 1995. It is illegal in most countries (though Sweden legalised the practice in 2009). But since it is almost impossible to prove that an abortion has been carried out for reasons of sex selection, the practice remains widespread. An ultrasound scan costs about $12, which is within the scope of many—perhaps most—Chinese and Indian families. In one hospital in Punjab, in northern India, the only girls born after a round of ultrasound scans had been mistakenly identified as boys, or else had a male twin.

The spread of fetal-imaging technology has not only skewed the sex ratio but also explains what would otherwise be something of a puzzle: sexual disparities tend to rise with income and education, which you would not expect if “backward thinking” was all that mattered. In India, some of the most prosperous states—Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat—have the worst sex ratios. In China, the higher a province’s literacy rate, the more skewed its sex ratio. The ratio also rises with income per head.

In Punjab Monica Das Gupta of the World Bank discovered that second and third daughters of well-educated mothers were more than twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday as their brothers, regardless of their birth order. The discrepancy was far lower in poorer households. Ms Das Gupta argues that women do not necessarily use improvements in education and income to help daughters. Richer, well-educated families share their poorer neighbours’ preference for sons and, because they tend to have smaller families, come under greater pressure to produce a son and heir if their first child is an unlooked-for daughter**.

So modernisation and rising incomes make it easier and more desirable to select the sex of your children. And on top of that smaller families combine with greater wealth to reinforce the imperative to produce a son. When families are large, at least one male child will doubtless come along to maintain the family line. But if you have only one or two children, the birth of a daughter may be at a son’s expense. So, with rising incomes and falling fertility, more and more people live in the smaller, richer families that are under the most pressure to produce a son.

In China the one-child policy increases that pressure further. Unexpectedly, though, it is the relaxation of the policy, rather than the policy pure and simple, which explains the unnatural upsurge in the number of boys.


In most Chinese cities couples are usually allowed to have only one child—the policy in its pure form. But in the countryside, where 55% of China’s population lives, there are three variants of the one-child policy. In the coastal provinces some 40% of couples are permitted a second child if their first is a girl. In central and southern provinces everyone is permitted a second child either if the first is a girl or if the parents suffer “hardship”, a criterion determined by local officials. In the far west and Inner Mongolia, the provinces do not really operate a one-child policy at all. Minorities are permitted second—sometimes even third—children, whatever the sex of the first-born (see map).

The provinces in this last group are the only ones with close to normal sex ratios. They are sparsely populated and inhabited by ethnic groups that do not much like abortion and whose family systems do not disparage the value of daughters so much. The provinces with by far the highest ratios of boys to girls are in the second group, the ones with the most exceptions to the one-child policy. As the BMJ study shows, these exceptions matter because of the preference for sons in second or third births.

For an example, take Guangdong, China’s most populous province. Its overall sex ratio is 120, which is very high. But if you take first births alone, the ratio is “only” 108. That is outside the bounds of normality but not by much. If you take just second children, however, which are permitted in the province, the ratio leaps to 146 boys for every 100 girls. And for the relatively few births where parents are permitted a third child, the sex ratio is 167. Even this startling ratio is not the outer limit. In Anhui province, among third children, there are 227 boys for every 100 girls, while in Beijing municipality (which also permits exceptions in rural areas), the sex ratio reaches a hard-to-credit 275. There are almost three baby boys for each baby girl.

Ms Das Gupta found something similar in India. First-born daughters were treated the same as their brothers; younger sisters were more likely to die in infancy. The rule seems to be that parents will joyfully embrace a daughter as their first child. But they will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure subsequent children are sons.

The hazards of bare branches

Throughout human history, young men have been responsible for the vast preponderance of crime and violence—especially single men in countries where status and social acceptance depend on being married and having children, as it does in China and India. A rising population of frustrated single men spells trouble.

The crime rate has almost doubled in China during the past 20 years of rising sex ratios, with stories abounding of bride abduction, the trafficking of women, rape and prostitution. A study into whether these things were connected† concluded that they were, and that higher sex ratios accounted for about one-seventh of the rise in crime. In India, too, there is a correlation between provincial crime rates and sex ratios. In “Bare Branches”††, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer gave warning that the social problems of biased sex ratios would lead to more authoritarian policing. Governments, they say, “must decrease the threat to society posed by these young men. Increased authoritarianism in an effort to crack down on crime, gangs, smuggling and so forth can be one result.”

Violence is not the only consequence. In parts of India, the cost of dowries is said to have fallen (see article). Where people pay a bride price (ie, the groom’s family gives money to the bride’s), that price has risen. During the 1990s, China saw the appearance of tens of thousands of “extra-birth guerrilla troops”—couples from one-child areas who live in a legal limbo, shifting restlessly from city to city in order to shield their two or three children from the authorities’ baleful eye. And, according to the World Health Organisation, female suicide rates in China are among the highest in the world (as are South Korea’s). Suicide is the commonest form of death among Chinese rural women aged 15-34; young mothers kill themselves by drinking agricultural fertilisers, which are easy to come by. The journalist Xinran Xue thinks they cannot live with the knowledge that they have aborted or killed their baby daughters.

Some of the consequences of the skewed sex ratio have been unexpected. It has probably increased China’s savings rate. This is because parents with a single son save to increase his chances of attracting a wife in China’s ultra-competitive marriage market. Shang-Jin Wei of Columbia University and Xiaobo Zhang of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC, compared savings rates for households with sons versus those with daughters. “We find not only that households with sons save more than households with daughters in all regions,” says Mr Wei, “but that households with sons tend to raise their savings rate if they also happen to live in a region with a more skewed sex ratio.” They calculate that about half the increase in China’s savings in the past 25 years can be attributed to the rise in the sex ratio. If true, this would suggest that economic-policy changes to boost consumption will be less effective than the government hopes.

Over the next generation, many of the problems associated with sex selection will get worse. The social consequences will become more evident because the boys born in large numbers over the past decade will reach maturity then. Meanwhile, the practice of sex selection itself may spread because fertility rates are continuing to fall and ultrasound scanners reach throughout the developing world.


Yet the story of the destruction of baby girls does not end in deepest gloom. At least one country—South Korea—has reversed its cultural preference for sons and cut the distorted sex ratio (see chart 3). There are reasons for thinking China and India might follow suit.

South Korea was the first country to report exceptionally high sex ratios and has been the first to cut them. Between 1985 and 2003, the share of South Korean women who told national health surveyors that they felt “they must have a son” fell by almost two-thirds, from 48% to 17%. After a lag of a decade, the sex ratio began to fall in the mid-1990s and is now 110 to 100. Ms Das Gupta argues that though it takes a long time for social norms favouring sons to alter, and though the transition can be delayed by the introduction of ultrasound scans, eventually change will come. Modernisation not only makes it easier for parents to control the sex of their children, it also changes people’s values and undermines those norms which set a higher store on sons. At some point, one trend becomes more important than the other.

It is just possible that China and India may be reaching that point now. The census of 2000 and the CASS study both showed the sex ratio stable at around 120. At the very least, it seems to have stopped rising. Locally, Ms Das Gupta argues†††, the provinces which had the highest sex ratios (and have two-thirds of China’s population) have seen a deceleration in their ratios since 2000, and provinces with a quarter of the population have seen their ratios fall. In India, one study found that the cultural preference for sons has been falling, too, and that the sex ratio, as in much of China, is rising more slowly. In villages in Haryana, grandmothers sit veiled and silent while men are present. But their daughters sit and chat uncovered because, they say, they have seen unveiled women at work or on television so much that at last it seems normal to them.

Ms Das Gupta points out that, though the two giants are much poorer than South Korea, their governments are doing more than it ever did to persuade people to treat girls equally (through anti-discrimination laws and media campaigns). The unintended consequences of sex selection have been vast. They may get worse. But, at long last, she reckons, “there seems to be an incipient turnaround in the phenomenon of ‘missing girls’ in Asia.”




* “China’s excess males, sex selective abortion and one child policy”, by Wei Xing Zhu, Li Lu and Therese Hesketh. BMJ 2009

** “Why is son preference so persistent in East and South Asia?” By Monica Das Gupta, Jiang Zhenghua, Li Bohua, Xie Zhenming, Woojin Chung and Bae Hwa-Ok. World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper 2942.

† “Sex ratios and crime: evidence from China’s one-child policy”, by Lena Edlund, Hongbin Li, Junjian Yi and Junsen Zhang. Institute for the Study of Labour, Bonn. Discussion Paper 3214

†† “Bare Branches”, by Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer. MIT Press, 2004

††† “Is there an incipient turnaround in Asia’s “missing girls” phenomenon?” By Monica Das Gupta, Woojin Chung and Li Shuzhuo. World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper 4846.