Selective abortion in China

Here is an artcle I wrote recently for AIESEC Toronto...

Since the introduction of the one child policy in 1979, Chinese government has been busy fixing the laws to diminish the side effect it entails; this includes allowing agriculture families have a second child and increase welfare to those with two daughters, in the hopes to release any burden man-less caused to those parents. Despite that, there is an enlarging surplus of men to women every year.
However, China’s one child policy has been targeted as the empirical cause to the much skewed sex ratio. In pursuance to Chinese custom, men support their parents when they age, while women care for their husbands’ parents. Plus, men are usually seen as the beams of the society and heirs of the name. For those reasons, many parents understandably prefer the child to be male for they are limited to have only one. Those families who have a girl instead of a boy will seek ways to “get rid off” the girl secretly in order to have the boy. As a result, many practices are developed from female infanticide to baby abandonment, and the wider spreading use of ultrasound testing before birth enhances the practice of selective abortion.
On the other hand, Chinese government’s supplementary regulations to the policy never seem to tackle down the sky rocketing male ratio. Chinese law prohibits the selective abortion and it is planning to criminalize abortion and ultrasounds obtained for sex-selection purposes. Nonetheless, the latest government figure gives a rising sex ratio of 119 boys to every 100 girls; in some rural places, the split is 133 to 100. Which mechanism produces the rise, selective abortion, female infanticide, female alive but hidden in population or female abandonment? The answer is elusive. What we can conclude is such outlawing won’t be efficient if female infanticide or abandonment is still readily available substitute.
In over 25 years, Chinese government claims a reduction of 250 to 300 million in its population based on the growth, and plans the policy as permanent. Beneath the appealing digits, people are predicting about 40 million men in China may live as frustrated bachelors by 2020. Alongside that, there is a potential threat to social safety. Guess neither the rulers nor normal families can exempt from tasting the bitterness of aftermath.