Tough battle forecast for gender imbalance

China still faces a steep challenge in achieving a normal gender balance, according to an official with the top health authority.

This is despite a continual drop in the nation's highly skewed gender ratio in births over the past six years.

In an effort to remedy the imbalance, the National Health and Family Planning Commission pursued 2,014 cases involving illegal fetus gender identification and gender-selective abortion in the first half of the year, said Zhou Gongwei.