Son preference in China

Son preference in China is a gender preference issue underpinned by the belief that boys have more value than girls. In China, the bias towards male over female offspring is demonstrated by gender sex ratio. Whether children are male or female has an economic impact on families, since the financial support that parents receive after their child marries is significantly differentiated by their gender.

This can be one of the reasons that Chinese parents are more willing to have a son. Chinese agrarian society influences sex preference deeply as well. In agrarian societies, cultivating the land and farming are people's primary source of wealth. Agriculture is explained to require high levels of physical strength in a primitive agricultural society in order to produce more. Thus, the long run agriculture society in China can explain this phenomenon. Although the Chinese patriarchal thinking can be traced back thousands of years, with the development of the Chinese economy, this concept potential gradually disintegrates.

History

The origin of the Chinese son preference can be related to the beginning of Chinese patriarchal society. Agriculture is also a key factor in the historical preference for sons. For thousands of years in China, most Chinese people preferred sons rather than daughters because majority of males have the ability to earn more than girls, especially in agrarian communities. When human society depends on physical strength for maintaining the necessities of family life, men are likely to occupy a dominant position in social production. These social production activities include hunting, animal husbandry, and plowing.

In most of the religious aspects, males are preferred because they have the ability to continue the family line; in financial factor, most of China's older generation believe that girls typically have no responsibility for their parents when they marry. The ethical thoughts of male superiority and female sorrow have existed in the patriarchal society for considerable time. With the development of feudal ethics, this viewpoint has gradually developed and deepened into the hearts of the people.

Prior to 1949, certain aspects of taijiao (fetal education) were believed to help ensure a fetus would be male, and pregnant women might visit also a fortune teller in an effort to determine fetal sex.

In the People's Republic of China, local government bureaus and work units composed cultural works such as songs and dramas in an effort to overturn traditional cultural practices deemed inconsistent with modernization, namely the traditional son preference and trends of marrying earlier and having larger families. Organized group conversations and cultural activities were also used to challenge these traditional preferences and achieved some success.

The traditional son preference in China has contributed to sex-selective abortions following the development of ultrasound machines in the 1980s and China's One-Child policy. In 1986, the National Commission for Family Planning and the Ministry of Health prohibited prenatal sex determination except when diagnosing hereditary diseases.Individuals or clinics that violate the prohibition are subject to fines. This prohibition was repeatedly affirmed in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Since the 1990s, government efforts to eliminate the traditional son preference and to promote son/daughter equality in family planning have increased. They further accelerated after the United Nations-sponsored Caring for Girls national campaign in 2003.

Reasons

Agrarian society

The agrarian society is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland. Agrarian society in China is one of the factors that impacts the Chinese son preference. Before the world started to globalise, during the Song, Ming and Qing dynasty, China was trapped in an agrarian society period. The majority of work in agriculture was deemed to utilize males’ strength. Although the expansionary of urbanisation has increased in recent decades throughout China, agriculture still has impact on gender bias in this country. The Chinese social culture cannot be changed easily. Despite the fact that China has developed its economics rapidly, majority of farmers who move from rural areas to urban cities still hold the son preference value; in Chinese social culture, sons should take more responsibility to take on households.

Financial security

Financial security is a reason that affects sex preference in China. In Chinese social culture based on older generation concepts, once a girl is married with her husband, she will belong to the husbands family, which means she will no longer have the responsibility to take care of her parents anymore. Thus, their parents will worry about who will take care of them if their daughter were to get married. In general, those that follow the traditional Chinese society believe that sons can take responsibility for their family, instead of girls.

In other words, traditionally, the blood of the family has been inherited by the male side. After the woman married, she joined her husbands family and took care of her in-laws rather than her own parents. For a long period of time, "nurturing children to prevent old age" is the iron law of people's trust. In contrast, from several Chinese opinions, raising a daughter becomes a waste. Some Chinese Sociologists even point out that from the perspective of society, it is not rational to be patriarchal, but for individuals, this is still a wise choice.

Around the late 1970s, Chinese population became larger. Therefore, the Chinese government advanced the 'one child policy' in order to control the large population in 1979. With the developing technology, Chinese parents were able to know their child's sex before birth, causing them to potentially get a sex-selection abortion to make sure they have boys. The generation of older Chinese people believe they will potentially get financial support even if their sons are getting married.

Traditional Chinese folk religion

Confucius, founder of Confucianism

Son preference in rural China has some affect from traditional Chinese folk religion. Such folk religion may overlap with an individual's belief in Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, or other traditional Chinese religions. It is widely known that the majority of Chinese people hold Confucianism as their core value religion in ancient China; patriarchy is a part of value included by Confucianism. In general, the preference of a son is strongly commended in countries which follow Confucianism.

Confucianism brings a heavy burden on Chinese women. In Chinese traditional Confucian families, the husband and other family members have more status than wives. A Chinese wife's responsibility is to look after and serve the household, including doing all the housework. Ancestor worship is underlined by Chinese folk religion as well. Chinese ancestor worship emphasizes filial piety. One of the filial method is to continue the family line in China. Passing on the genealogy is one of the main methods to continue the family. However, in old Chinese beliefs, a family’s genealogy will be interrupted if they do not have sons. Moreover, the inability to bear a son can become a potential factor for divorce for some couples.

Consequences

The sex ratio of birth (SRB) is defined as the ratio of the new born male infants to every 100 girls. It is demonstrated that China has always reported high SRBs during past decades because of the effect of preferences for sons. Due to this, there would possibly be a lack of women in the whole society of China for next 20 years, as a shortage of women was estimated to be faced.

According to the reality of male excess to their female counterparts, majority of the following consequences can be assumed. Firstly, the sexual frustration and psychosocial vulnerability may come together to cause males to become violent and aggressive. To be clear, the reason for this is because without access to women, they may not achieve marriage or bear a child to meet the Chinese traditional expectations. Although it just an assumption, this prediction has a good empirical to support: the cross-culture evidence illustrates that the majority of criminals and murderers were low status and unmarried males. They may turn to anti-social organizations, threatening social stability and security, since they do not behave in current social order.

Therefore, male surplus is a trepidation issue which we should be concerned with. Nevertheless, the evidence is not strong enough to prove the assumption that they are prone to crime, because a majority of unmated males are also prone to becoming depressed. Furthermore, excess male population can stimulate the pornography industry as well. Majority of data illustrates that the sex industry is experiencing high expansion in current decades. However, the connection between an increasing number of sex workers and the increasing of sex cannot be proved. According to some research, the main reason for the increasing number of sex workers in China can be related to Chinese domestic socioeconomic inequality.

Some positive changes may occur because of the high sex ratio of males in China. A woman's status may develop gradually due to the sex preference and the rise in Fertility needs. The mortality rate of girls will decrease as gender discrimination decreases. Some articles argue that sex imbalance is a way to control China's large population. Furthermore, with the decreasing number of women in society, their value will be increased. In other words, developing female status may cause the son preference to decrease.

The issue of women’s rights and patriarchal issues has also become a major concern of the representatives of the Chinese National Committees in 2017. In recent years, the Chinese government has attached great importance to the rights and interests of women, especially with the series of targeted measures taken in recent years to significantly improve the status of women. Within China, a strong preference for sons and the practice of sex-selective abortion have resulted in a staggering imbalance, with an excess of 32 million males under the age of 20. This son preference has also triggered postnatal discrimination against girls, manifesting in a range of harmful practices that span from infanticide to the neglect of essential healthcare and nutrition, frequently culminating in untimely mortality.

Chinese one-child policy

Birth sex ratios have dramatically changed in China since the implementation of the One-Child Policy.

Roadside sign in Danshan, Yanjiang District, Ziyang, Sichuan, which reads "It is forbidden to discriminate against, abuse or abandon baby girls"

The Chinese one-child policy (instituted from 1979 to 2016) contributed to sex imbalance in China as well. The policy penalized families who had more than one child. The original intention of this policy was to control the growth rate of China's large population. Although this policy was introduced as long term and aimed to reduce the number of family members, this measure was not uniform to some extent.

In the early 1980s, the sex ratio of births was 108 (the ratio of male to female was 108:100), slightly higher than the natural level. By 2000, this number had risen to 120, with some provinces such as Anhui, Jiangxi, and Shaanxi reaching 130. Compared to the natural level, this meant 35 million fewer girls were born than would be biologically expected. Although countries like India face similar imbalances, China's gap is the largest, mostly due to the one child policy.

The Chinese government tried to counteract these developments by compensating families who only had a girl and, in some rural areas, allowing them to have a second child if the first was a girl. This however led to further reinforcement of the idea that boys were more valuable.

Reactions

The United Nations proposed improvements in gender equality in China. Son preference in China has also attracted social or international attention. The gender imbalance in Chinese-born babies is a problem that has plagued China in recent years, and has been a concern of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. In the conclusion, the Commission made some constructive suggestions.

The Committee recommends that China conduct compulsory gender equality education for family planning officials and recommend that China address the tendency to be patriarchal in rural areas in order to find the root causes of patriarchal attitudes in rural areas. To solve the negative consequences of the one-child policy, the specific recommendations of this committee is to expand the benefit of public in rural areas, especially rural women, by expanding the insurance system and pensions in China. In addition, with efforts of various government departments in China, nowadays, more people can treat boys and girls equally.

See also

• Little emperor syndrome