14 January, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Seems at least a few of you miss the feisty, political Anglofille. I guess I should do more political posts because I do miss this kind of writing. I’ve had several e-mails (but only a few comments – why don’t you all just comment!) about my previous post and I have expanded on it here. This has been an extremely disturbing subject to read and write about.
Regarding the infanticide I wrote about, there is no way to know how widespread it is at this point in time. There are no official reports from the Chinese government and since they have a vested interest in suppressing any such evidence, researchers have a very difficult time quantifying it. There are no hard statistics because there is no evidence (birth certificates, etc.) that a female child who is later killed ever existed. And prosecutions seem to be rare. Gendercide Watch estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of infanticides in the world annually, with the world’s two most populous nations (China and India) accounting for most of those. Perhaps in a country with a billion or more people, an academic researcher or Chinese government official might be able to quantify this number as “low.”
The World Health Organization is one of the few international organizations that publishes research on infanticide in China and other Asian countries. I was shocked to read the following excerpt from this article:
Female infanticide is commonly practised in parts of Asia. A recent survey cited in Desjarlais et al (1995) indicated that over 50% of women in their sample in China had killed a baby daughter. Women are often forced to carry out infanticide through family pressure and desperate living circumstances and are often left with feelings of remorse and guilt.
From another article:
[In South Asia]…it has been estimated that early deaths and the alleged infanticide of girl babies in these countries have caused up to 100 million women to be “missing” from the statistics.
Anyone who is interested can search the WHO site for many different articles that comment on the practice of infanticide.
I have come across many anecdotal reports of Chinese officials and doctors committing infanticide (of males and females) to enforce the one-child policy, such as this incident reported in the Montreal Gazette.
The key research in this field isn’t available online in its entirety. I was surprised that China actually has a history of female infanticide dating back to the 19th-century, before the formation of the PRC. [Coale and Banister, "Five Decades of Missing Females in China," Demography, 31: 3, p. 472 and also Coale, Ansley J., “Excess female mortality and the balance of the sexes in the population: An estimate of the number of "missing females,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, 517-523.]
I think the most well-known documented research comes from anthropologist G. William Skinner and Chinese researcher Yuan Jianhua, who used census data to show that in one single region of China between 1971 and 1980, 800,000 females were unaccounted for. Their primary research isn’t online. It’s important to note that until the late 1980s, ultrasounds and sex-selective abortions were not in wide use (as noted by Coale, cited above, who attributed the sex-ratio imbalance before this time to infanticide and neglect.)
In looking at this issue, one has to watch out for right-wing groups in the US (including in the government) who want to exploit this issue to further their own anti-abortion agenda at home. The other day I read a report by the U.S. House of Representatives that contained important information, despite an obvious slant. I suspect that many on the left do not speak out about the one-child policy in China (including forced abortions and sterilizations) because they fear being aligned with the right-wing, who have managed to successfully hijack this issue.
While there might be disagreement on this issue, what is a fact that no one can disagree with is that there are millions of missing Chinese women, upwards of 30 million and probably even more. [The figures in this most recent report – that there will be 30 million more men of marriageable age than women by 2020 – are likely underestimated.] The problem of “missing women” isn’t just a problem in China, but in many other Asian countries, particularly India. From the research I have done, in China there are various reasons why these women are missing: infanticide, sex-selective abortions, abandonment (in an orphanage, in the gutter), adoption by foreigners, being sold on the black market for a variety of horrific reasons and then there’s the phenomenon of girls who are living but unaccounted for – their parents never recorded their births (and as a result, their daughters will not be entitled to any form of education, etc.).
I have focused on infanticide and sex-selective abortion. To me (and to the World Health Organization), infanticide includes not only direct killing, but indirect forms of killing as well (abandoning an infant and leaving her for dead; denying a child medical treatment or proper nourishment, thus causing death). This kind of neglect is widespread and also applies to boys who are disabled or have birth defects. The 1995 British TV documentary The Dying Rooms estimated that at that time, up to a million baby girls in China each year were dumped in unsanitary orphanages by their parents and many died because of the neglect they suffered in these places. This article about the documentary is very disturbing.
[This website has nearly ten pages of links to newspaper articles on the one-child policy and its consequences.]
There is a lot of disagreement between the so-called experts on how many girls have been victims of infanticide and how many are missing for other reasons. We’re talking about tens of millions of human beings here. While the most likely explanation for the current sex-ratio disparities is ultrasounds and sex-selective abortions [though infanticide is clearly still practiced], this technology has not always been available. I would love to know how those who downplay the notion of widespread infanticide ever having occurred in China explain these missing women. All of the explanations I have read defy common sense. They seem to point to an underreporting of female births as the main cause. Well then, where are these women now? Tens of millions of them have apparently managed to fly under the radar. If there are all these “unreported” women in China, why is Beijing worried about a bride shortage?
A few years ago, a British newspaper published a photo of a baby girl left to die in a gutter. This photo was taken by a tourist and was somehow smuggled out of the country, despite the fact that the officials confiscated most of her film. I saw this photo when it was first published in the US (in a fashion magazine, of all places). The Mirror (not the most reliable newspaper) originally published the photo and ran a story on it. This is a rather famous photo (other newspapers subsequently ran it) and I have no reason to believe it is not legitimate. I included a tiny thumbnail here — if you want to see it larger, please click, but know in advance it’s quite horrifying to see.
Anglofille said @ 7:33 pm | feminism, news & politics |
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That’s what I’ve been doing all along in my blog, especially after the awakening.
Here is a report of human rights violation in China from Amnesty International.
And, from Human Rights Watch:
BEIJING 2008 - The Olympic Games Come To China: Will Human Rights?I couldn’t find the reference to Infanticide thought.
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I just wanted to point out for anyone who’s interested that you can watch The Dying Room online. I’m only 4 minutes into it so far…
Thanks for bringing up this topic. So so so scary…[sigh]
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Wow, thank you so much for pointing that out, Robyn. I didn’t realize it was available online.
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rebecca Says:
January 15th, 2007 at 4:44 pmWow! Yeah that is the picture I was talking about in my other post. I should have read this post first! I saw it in French Elle, but I didn’t know it was published in the English version also.
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Anita Says:
January 15th, 2007 at 4:56 pmMarvelous piece, Anglofille. Thank you. I’ve missed your political writing at the same time that I wish that you didn’t have to write it.
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I’m opposed to the Olympics in Beijing for this (and other) reasons. I just don’t think we can, in all good conscience, tacitly condone the practices of a government with such an appalling record, let alone subsidise them to the tune of billions of dollars. I had real mixed feelings about even going as a tourist there, though I am glad I did.
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gadfleye Says:
January 16th, 2007 at 4:10 pmAhhhh…that’s the stuff. I certainly miss the ranting, political Anglofille. How can I make sarcastic comments about Paris, Venice, or what you had for dinner last night?
I think the Right Wing is split on this issue - the Religious Right (no reproductive rights for anyone under any circumstances) vs the Free Traders (as long as we [big business] are making money, no human rights violation is too big to overlook).
I don’t hear the Bush administration protesting too loudly unless they want to use the issue of human rights as a cudgel to further corporate interests or pander for votes during election season, not that the Clinton administration was any different.
US foreign policy on this issue: Money talks and Human Rights walks.
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I am so glad to find your blog on China’s infanticide–an issue I’ve been speaking about since the recent publication of my novel, “China Doll.”
In fact I will be presenting the results of my investigation at the upcoming U.N. Conference on the status of women.
You can also read my op-ed article today in the New York Sun at http://www.nysun.com/article/48829More information on gendercide and Chinese orphanages is available on my website at http://www.TaliaCarner.com
It is important that together we break the wall of silence –and indifference?–around this issue of Chian’s “missing” girls. The upcoming 2008 Olympics give us a chance to do so.
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I would like to add the source of the photo of the dead baby in the curb by the passing man:
I have the original hard copy of the June 2001 Marie Claire Magazine where this article appeared. My webmistress scanned it into my website in 2002–and that is the source of the electronic version of this article that has been picked by hundreds of otehr websites. It carries several other horrific photogrpahs.
Here is the direct link to the full piece: Dead Newborn In Gutter
