China Worries About Shortage Of 'Wives' In Near Future

[PHANTOM21]

BEIJING -- China hopes to achieve a normal balance of newborn boys and girls within six years with its ban on abortions to select an infant's sex and by making welfare payments to couples without sons, a family planning official said Thursday.

Government figures show 117 boys are born in China for every 100 girls -- a gap blamed largely on a policy limiting most couples to one child. In a society that values sons, many parents abort baby girls, hoping to try again for a boy.

The gap has led to warnings that millions of men won't find wives in coming years, fueling social tensions and a black market in baby girls and abducted women.

"Illegal sex determination and sex-selective abortion must be strictly banned," said Zhao Baige, vice minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission. "China has set the goal of lowering the sex ratio to a normal level by 2010."

China last year banned abortions to select a baby's sex and also bans using ultrasound examinations to learn the sex of a fetus. Zhao defended China's "one child" limit, and said other Asian societies have similar imbalances.

"It's not just China," Zhao said at a news conference. She said South Korea had 114 boys for every 100 girls in 1988.

"And South Korea does not have this family planning policy," she said.

The "one child" limit allows rural families to have two children if the first is a girl, because Chinese peasants traditionally rely on sons to support them in old age.

Abuses are rife. Researchers say China has millions fewer girls than it normally should, suggesting that many were aborted or killed after birth.

"The criminal acts of trafficking, maltreatment and abandonment of female infants must be punished with severity," Zhao said.

China plans to do more to teach rural families to value daughters as much as sons, and to expand welfare programs so that poor couples don't feel they have to produce a son, she added.

A plan called the Girl Care Project will teach "equality between men and women and promote the value of having fewer and healthier children," she said.

Another program gives money to couples in poor areas who only have one child or two daughters and no sons, or whose children are deceased or disabled, she said.

Couples get $145 per couple a year after they turn 60 as "as compensation to families that practice family planning," Zhao said.