Chinese men could face a single life as a result of sex-selective abortions.

It has been reported that China could face a shortage of 24 million future brides for its menfolk – as a result of its cultural preference for baby boys.

The research comes from a book entitled “Contemporary Chinese Social Structure” and was conducted by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who have identified the gender imbalance among newborns as the country’s most serious demographic problem for the population of 1.3 billion.

Since the launch of its “one child” family planning policy of the 1970s, intended to control a burgeoning population, China’s families have been subjected to some difficult choices.

Whilst rural families are often permitted a second child if the first is a girl, the majority of urban couples have to abide by this policy. With a clear bias towards male heirs, and only one chance at this, it is widespread and common to terminate a female foetus to make way for a male; the Academy says gender selection abortions are “extremely commonplace”.

Wang Guangzhou, a researcher on the project, was quoted in Chinese newspaper the Global Times as saying that both the traditional fertility culture and prenatal sex selection had contributed to the problem.

The shift towards more male births started in the 1980s when ultrasound scanning was developed to determine a baby’s sex. At that time, for every 100 girls born, up to 107 boys were born. By the 1990s, that number rose to 111 male births for every 100 female births, and another decade later the ratio grew to 116 boys to every 100 girls.

However, now, especially in rural areas where the problem is more acute, as many as 130 boys are born for every 100 girls.

Wang Yuesheng, another population researcher at the Academy, warned that males in poverty-stricken areas would be forced to accept late marriage or remain single for their entire lives, which may “cause a break in family lines”.

The irony is astounding. A family ensures it has a male heir, possibly terminating an earlier female foetus, only for him to grow up, fail to find a wife and never create a male heir of his own, thus “terminating” the family line.

Twenty-four million men of marriageable age unable to find a wife by 2020. This reads like some new reality dating show – a twenty-first century survival of the fittest. Chinese men will be forced to up their game to ensure that they are the lucky ones who aren’t left on the shelf. There will be no talk of a single, 30-something ‘Bridget Jones’ in this China.

Yet other consequences might not prove so light-hearted. Sex trafficking and kidnapping are already rife in China – its National Population and Family Planning Commission cites that abductions and trafficking of women and infants had become “rampant” in areas with a higher number of men.

These areas are also thought to face problems of illegal marriages and forced prostitution. Coupled with the fact that it is likely to be poorer rural Chinese men, such as farmers, who will have trouble finding a wife, the country could end up with large groups of young, unmarried men and a potentially concurrent rise in crime and social instability.

In fact, because son preference has been a significant phenomenon in Asia for centuries, the Chinese actually have a term for such young men. They are called guang gun-er or “bare branches”, because they are branches of the family tree that will never bear fruit.

It is quite unfathomable that the Chinese government failed to anticipate the coming of this imbalance, unless it very naively ignored the danger of sex-selective abortion – moral, social and economic.

Admittedly, the gender imbalance among newborns in China has slowed since 2005, but it is still much higher than what is considered the normal sex ratio at birth (SRB) of 103-107 males for every 100 females.

The solutions are unclear, aside from removing the “one child” policy immediately and thus removing the pressure to have a boy as a first-born. However, after more than thirty years of a cultural preference towards sons, enforced further by a legal policy, sex-selective abortions could still continue at the current rate. 

The damage has already been done, and only in time will the true consequences be revealed. In a country with so much to offer, the decision to curb the population could end up breaking it down completely.