Wizblog

Missing Girls

The Chinese practices of sex selection favoring males and female infanticide have to catch up with them sooner or later, but I haven't read much about the looming crisis. This MSNBC article takes on the subject, and it looks like the crisis isn't looming any longer. They call it a "a self-perpetuated demographic disaster". One might think that a shortage of females would cause them to become more valued and appreciated in a society. It looks instead as if it has caused them to suffer even more exploitation and abuse than before. And the "bachelor communities" don't sound like nice places to live.

The shortage of women is creating a "huge societal issue,” warned U.N. resident coordinator Khalid Malik earlier this year.

Along with HIV/AIDS and environmental degradation, he said it was one of the three biggest challenges facing China.

"In eight to 10 years, we will have something like 40 to 60 million missing women," he said, adding that it will have "enormous implications" for China's prostitution industry and human trafficking...

The hint of "serious" problems ahead can be seen in the increasing cases of human trafficking as bachelors try to "purchase" their wives.

China's police have freed more than 42,000 kidnapped women and children from 2001 to 2003.

...low-status young adult men with little chance of forming families of their own are "much more prone to attempt to improve their situation through violent and criminal behavior in a strategy of coalitional aggression."

The growing crime rate in China....is being linked to China's massive "floating" or transient population, some 80 million of which are low-status males...