The skewed gender ratio of China, which is now close to 120 boys for every 100 girls, doesn't have much to do with the country's one-child family planning policy.

Rather, it has more to do with the nation's demographic tradition and the absence of a social security network in rural areas.

The sex-ratio imbalance is primarily a rural issue. Most urbanites prefer to have girls, who are perceived to be more caring and filial than boys.

But in a traditionally agricultural nation, the preference for boys is a natural selection, in that muscular offspring can better till the land and care for the older generation.

Men outnumber women by a pathetically wide margin in China, and the trend is continuing. The selective abortion of female foetuses, which is restricted by law, and the neglect of the health of female children could spawn increased anti-social behaviour and violence, posing an internal threat to a country's security, researchers say. The result: social destabilization.

The "surplus" men will not have enough women to marry and become marginalized in societies where marriage is nearly universal and grants social status. This holds true even in today's China.

Hundreds of thousands of females "have gone missing" in China because of the illegal selective abortion of female foetuses over the past two decades.

Apart from the "intrinsic cruelty," such an action impedes the development and prosperity of male-skewed nations.

For societies like China, the problem seems to lie with their traditional, but outdated, beliefs. Most of our people apparently still seem to believe in the 3,000-year-old Chinese body of poetry, The Book of Songs, one of whose poems reads:

When a son is born,

Let him sleep on the bed,

Clothe him with fine clothes.

And give him jade to play with;

When a daughter is born,

Let her sleep on the ground,

Wrap her in common wrappings,

And give her broken tiles for playthings.

Ultrasound and amniocentesis can easily identify the sex of a foetus today, and there have been reports from some of our provinces about illegal mobile abortion clinics. Technology may have played a role in the "killings," but the problem has far deeper roots. In some rural areas, a boy child is still the most prized gift a woman can give her family.

Cynics and sceptics may argue that China is better off without the tens of millions of "missing women" because it already has the world's largest population to deal with. Such arguments, however, discount the fact that we have had as many men for those "missing women."

For parents desperate to have a son as an heir, it's high time to start wondering if they will be able to get a daughter-in-law to continue the family lineage.

In dreadful addition, female foeticide creates more undesirable men. And who would be these least desirable? Obviously, the poorest, the uneducated, and the skill-less - whose sense of loss and deprivation could drive them to commit acts not natural to them.

To correct the sex-ratio imbalance, China has launched a nationwide "care-for-the-girls" project, under which the government rewards families for having girls. Benefits include healthcare and education subsidies.

But the ultimate solution lies only in the completion of a social security network that will help relieve rural residents of their retirement worries.

Email: zouhr@chinadaily.com.hk

(China Daily 10/13/2006 page4)