China brands 30-year-old unmarried women as 'left overs`

[Daredevil]

Causing a major outcry among the female population in China, the Communist government has labeled Chinese women failing to marry above the age of 30 as 'left over women'.

The government, which has defined the official age for women being left on the shelf as 27, has ordered its feminist All-China Women's Federation to use the derogatory term in several articles about the growing number of unmarried educated, professional, urban and single females aged 27-30, the Daily Mail reports.

According to one of the articles, pretty girls do not need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family but girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult, adding that those 'failing' to find a husband by the age of 30 are deemed 'undesirable'.

According to the government, hordes of unmarried men roaming the country may cause social havoc so it is necessary for women to marry. The government wants to shame the women into marrying young to counter the population's growing gender imbalance, the report added.

China brands 30-year-old unmarried women as 'left overs`

 

[Apollyon]

It's 27 year, Sir .!
In China unmarried and over 27 women = "leftover" onlee
Hope @cinoti can shed some light on this issue

 

[s002wjh]

it has nothing to do with government, but due to china 1 child and it culture parent often push their kids to marry. alot independent woman choose their carreer over marriage

 

[rock127]

Guys... girls are getting married late due to career but no logic of saying they are "left-overs".

Gone are the days when girls were forced to marry young.

 

[Ray]

What gets my goat is why the girls are considered to be 'left overs'?

Why not boys too?

 

[The Messiah]

What gets my goat is why the girls are considered to be 'left overs'?

Why not boys too?

Nothing like tasty goat korma

 

[s002wjh]

What gets my goat is why the girls are considered to be 'left overs'?

Why not boys too?

boys over 30s are consider left overs too, and they have worst reputation compare to girl leftovers. because most girl left overdecide to focus on carreer(its a choice), while due to gender ratio, if male is over 30s year and not married its usually not because of a choice, but because he can't find one.

 

[Ray]

boys over 30s are consider left overs too, and they have worst reputation compare to girl leftovers. because most girl left overdecide to focus on carreer(its a choice), while due to gender ratio, if male is over 30s year and not married its usually not because of a choice, but because he can't find one.

Now that should also have been mentioned.

This is an interesting report on the One Child Policy and its effects.

The Dark Side of One Child Policy of China
The Dark Side of One Child Policy of China

 

[Ray]

The Dark Side of One Child Policy of China

Where are the Missing Daughters of China?

People often hail the One Child policy of China for its success in reducing the population growth rate almost abruptly. They even give credit of fast economic development to this policy. But, the side effects of the one child policy are too many and too glaring to be ignored. The way it was implemented has also often made human rights activists and sociologists to reflect on Hitler's holocaust to wipe out the Jews from Europe.

The One Child Policy has left China with the most distorted male-to-female ratio in the world. A 2009 study of British Medical Journal estimated that in 2005, there was a surplus of 32 million males under the age of 20. This is close to Canadian population. It also found that 1.1 million extra male child were born in just that year. What is tells is that every year roughly one million extra males are being added to China's population. It paints a very disturbed picture of population dynamics in China.

Gu Baochang, a leading Chinese expert on family planning, calls it "the largest, the highest, and the longest" gender imbalance in the world. This self-perpetuated demographic disaster, which many experts call "gendercide", is much greater in enormity than the number of Jews made to disappear in the holocaust – 6 million.

A tiny fraction of fortunate girls certainly crossed border and reached other countries through adoptions; and the rest, no one wants to talk about. The world leaders are busy looking for their share of pie in the awe inspiring economic growth of China.

When the Chinese authorities imposed the one-child policy in 1979, couples resorted to abortions, infanticide, or abandoning infant girls to ensure their ONLY child was a boy. The reason lies in the cultural preference for a male child. Due to traditional beliefs, the one-child policy has been forcing couples to choose between "their future retirement and the lives of their daughters."

Although unfortunate, this gender bias exists not only in China but in many societies across the globe. As a result, and as recent history also tells us, whenever people have been forced to limit their family size, they have preferred to keep the male child and abandoned the female child, often before her birth.

Where is the equal number of missing women? This is the question human rights activists have been trying to ask for a long time.

Population Phobia and "Missing Girls"

The founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong never subscribed to the Malthusian idea of seeing its population as a threat of any kind, and went about building China using people as an asset. As a result, China's sex ratio remained fairly normal up to the 70's when there was no state control on family size. However, soon after Mao's death in 1976 the ruling elites fell prey to the ill-founded Malthusian fear of overpopulation and three years later imposed the one-child policy. It was an ambitious demographic engineering venture never seen in the human history before. As a result, within 25 years the annual birth rate dropped to 1.29% by 2002. Family planning officials boastfully claimed that the one-child policy prevented 300 million births which compares with the population of Europe.

The result appeared noteworthy to those ignorant about the dynamics of demography and the "Chinese success story" began to be quoted everywhere. The propaganda machinery of the Chinese state media has much to do with that. What is rarely discussed is the consequences of this so-called success story on the socio-cultural dynamics. The normal boy/girl ratio of the 80's became distorted into something like 120/100, according to many independent observers.

The abortion of female fetuses and infanticide was greatly aided by the spread of cheap and portable ultra-sound scanners. A report of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences revealed that only seven of China's 29 provinces were within the world's average sex ratio. It also cited eight "disaster provinces" with 26 to 38 percent more boys than girls.

The shortage of something like 30 million women is a "huge societal issue and another big challenge," according to U.N. resident coordinator Khalid Malik. For sure, the enormity of the problem is only going to be bigger in the future; in the coming decade, several million more will be added to the non-existing population of missing women. China's own population experts have been warning about this issue for years, but for the government it is business as usual.

How the Policy was Implemented

Theoretically the one-child policy is voluntary, but violations invite fines and punishments. Fines prove rather heavy for ordinary folks – several times their average annual income. Inability to pay fine is invitation to harassment which can take any shape. The implementation of the policy is monitored by the Family Planning Association (FPA) which has a full time staff of about 300,000 and tens of millions of volunteers overlooking every nook and corner of the country. These volunteers are notorious for being intrusive as well as imposing. As soon as they discover women second time pregnant, they start building pressure for abortion. The FPA officers are generally members of the Communist Party; they can act quite arbitrarily and order abortions and sterilizations. Performance related incentives keep them ever vigilant about non-compliers and policy-breakers.

Poor or village folks who lacked capacity to pay fine often reported about officials taking away their cattle, beating them up or ransacking their homes. Officials also make regular visits looking for illegal children. Loss of job and wage-cuts are other penalties. In 2007, a high ranking Communist Party official in Shanxi was fired for having too many children—three daughters from his wife and a son and daughter from another woman. There have been reports of extreme punishments too. For instance, a woman from Shanghai who was pregnant with second child, got fired from job, forced to abort and was sent for psychiatric treatment. She later ended up in a labor camp; no one knows what happened thereafter. While such incidents may not be very common but even few are enough to scare people into submission.

Denying birth certificates and identity documents to additional children has been another form of punishment. It denied schooling opportunities and made them ineligible to join the work force when they grew up. To escape trouble, many people did not declare extra children after the first one; as a result, they remained undocumented. These undocumented or "black permit" children are usually shifted from place to place among relatives and friends to escape detection. The number of such undocumented children has been estimated to be at least 6 million. This is a common punishment for children of the political or religious dissidents, even if their parents followed the one-child norm.

What kind of human dignity and future these "alien" citizens have in China is no one's worry.

In 2008, news of widespread violation of the policy came from Hubei Province where over 90,000 people, including scores of state officials and lawmakers, reportedly did not stick to one-child norm. It led to expulsion of about 500 members from the Communist Party.

Where Have All the Girls Gone?

How "Extra Children" Children got Protected

While the authorities have been strict in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, in other areas possibilities existed to get by with extra children without fine or punishment. Extra children are tolerated and documented as long as parents pay the fine; thus, the policy was never a worry for the rich people. Ordinary folks devise ingenious ways to protect their "extra" kids. A study conducted in the year 2000 indicated that probably only one child in five was the "only child". Here is a representative sample of ways to bypass the policy:

Rich people can arrange for delivery abroad and work thing out.
Get divorced and then remarry later.
Get the first child declared handicapped.
How about bribing the doctors to declare the second child twins of the first one! This trick gave birth to jokes about "twins" born 10 years apart or doctors asking the pregnant women, "Is it your first child or you are having twins?"
Giving birth in far off areas as the first child.
"Parking" additional kids with childless friends or relatives who wanted babies.

Thus, it can be safely assumed that there were widespread violations of the one-child policy.

Adoption from China

Adoption of children from China to the United States began in 1992, when the Chinese government began to allow international adoption. In 2009, Americans adopted 3,001 Chinese children, the largest number from any country. The average age of children adopted from China is 11 months. Over 90% are girls – a distinctive side effect of China's population control policies. The estimated cost of an adoption is 20,000 – 25,000 US dollars.

There are a number of criteria for eligibility for adoption. It is only for married couples: They must be married a minimum of 2 years if first marriage; 5 years if second or third marriage. No more than 2 previous marriages allowed for both spouse and no more than 4 children living at home.

Read the complete criteria for eligibility

Consequences of "Missing Girls" Phenomenon

A recent study of government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Services (CASS) predicted that 24 million Chinese men might not be able to find brides in 2020. The numbers from the state agency is likely to have a downward bias; other social organizations put that number in the 30 million to 50 million range.

The shortage of women has led to crimes such as forced marriages, bigamy, prostitution, rape, adultery and is also manifesting as homosexuality and distorted sexual habits. The "seriousness" of the problems is seen in the increasing cases of human trafficking as bachelors try to "purchase" wives.

The "missing girls" phenomenon has fueled human trafficking, especially of girls and women, according to organizations fighting it. They are lured or kidnapped and sold— even multiple times — into forced marriages or for commercial sex trade. Women from many neighboring countries are captured or trafficked into China; the most vulnerable being the North Korean women. According to a nonprofit group fighting sex slavery, the sex-ratio imbalance in China is leading to a "new tsunami of demand."

The 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report of the US State Department downgraded China to its Tier 2 watch list, because it is a "source, transit, and destination country for men, women and children being trafficked for forced labor and sexual exploitation."

 

[Ray]

(contd)

Army of Bachelors

As mentioned earlier, if the reports are correct almost a million extra males are being added every year. So, the one-child policy is creating a continuing distortion in the sex ratio.

According to authors of the book, Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population, the vast army of surplus males could pose a threat to China's stability. In their analysis, low-status young adult men with little chance of having 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." In China, unmarried men are called guang guan, or "bare branches" and are seen as "losers in societal competition."

The growing crime rate in China, which is often linked to the huge "floating" or transient population, some 80 million of which are low-status males, seems to add weight to their observation.

The imbalance will also aggravate the problem of an aging population in the future. In 2005, each retiree in China was supported by 10 workers. By 2020 this ratio would fall to one to six, and by 2050 to one to three. Such demographic changes have the potential of precipitating socio-economic crisis. The economic growth cannot be sustained with fewer people to work.

Girl Care Project

Worried by the consequences of the disturbed male/female ratio, the Chinese family planning authorities launched a "Girl Care Project". It aims to end pre natal sex selection and involves "attacking the criminal activities of drowning and abandoning baby girls [while] rewarding and assisting families that plan to give birth to baby girls," according to The People's Daily, mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party

While authorities view it as a way to foster more respect and concern for women and girls, critics say that it's being framed just to meet the future needs of men.

According to a top policy maker, China's birth control policy is now "a diversified mechanism" which allows for one-child in the cities, two in the rural areas, and three in ethnic regions, with no limit in Tibet.

Is State Control on Family Size Really Necessary?

There is little evidence to support the argument that State imposed limit on family size is the only way to quickly check the population growth. Kerala and China had similar fertility rates in 1979 when the one-child policy was introduced. Today, Kerala reports lower fertility rate than China. Besides, many other countries like Bangladesh have shown that it is possible to dramatically reduce fertility rates over a short period of time without forcing limit on family size. They achieved it by taking social and economic development to poor areas and expanding opportunities for women – these are proven way to reduce fertility rates.

Even in China, when the one-child policy was imposed there was already significant expansion of social and economic opportunities for women during the past decades. So, they were already tuned-in for smaller family size. The imposition of one-child norm mainly added distortions to sex ratio by encouraging abortions targeting female fetuses, although it did check the population growth rate.

An overlooked aspect of the one-child policy, which is positive, is the encouragement to late marriage and late childbirth. The minimum age of a woman to apply for child permit is 20. It gives a severe blow to the dominant proportion of population growth resulting from population momentum. In this aspect, India fares badly where almost fifty percent childbirths take place when the women are still below the legal age of 18. The importance of population momentum is highlighted in this article: Population of India: Need to Kill Population Momentum.

Enforcing a one-child policy may be possible in an authoritarian country like China but will have disastrous political consequences in any democracy societies, as it violates people's freedoms and individual rights. Thus, the only sensible approach is to follow the modern approach prescribed by the International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD (Cairo, 1994). It shifted the focus from "population control" to "population development." Development has proved to be the best contraceptive for any developing nation.

You may also like to explore: History and Politics of Population Phobia

A Lesson for China

Population Development: What Kerala can Teach India and China
Kerala,a tiny state of India, has achieved demographic transition solely based on human development. This is different from the economic development model prescribed in the West.


The Dark Side of One Child Policy of China

 

[rock127]

The Dark Side of One Child Policy of China

Where are the Missing Daughters of China?

People often hail the One Child policy of China for its success in reducing the population growth rate almost abruptly. They even give credit of fast economic development to this policy. But, the side effects of the one child policy are too many and too glaring to be ignored. The way it was implemented has also often made human rights activists and sociologists to reflect on Hitler's holocaust to wipe out the Jews from Europe.

The One Child Policy has left China with the most distorted male-to-female ratio in the world. A 2009 study of British Medical Journal estimated that in 2005, there was a surplus of 32 million males under the age of 20. This is close to Canadian population. It also found that 1.1 million extra male child were born in just that year. What is tells is that every year roughly one million extra males are being added to China's population. It paints a very disturbed picture of population dynamics in China.

Gu Baochang, a leading Chinese expert on family planning, calls it "the largest, the highest, and the longest" gender imbalance in the world. This self-perpetuated demographic disaster, which many experts call "gendercide", is much greater in enormity than the number of Jews made to disappear in the holocaust – 6 million.

A tiny fraction of fortunate girls certainly crossed border and reached other countries through adoptions; and the rest, no one wants to talk about. The world leaders are busy looking for their share of pie in the awe inspiring economic growth of China.

When the Chinese authorities imposed the one-child policy in 1979, couples resorted to abortions, infanticide, or abandoning infant girls to ensure their ONLY child was a boy. The reason lies in the cultural preference for a male child. Due to traditional beliefs, the one-child policy has been forcing couples to choose between "their future retirement and the lives of their daughters."

Although unfortunate, this gender bias exists not only in China but in many societies across the globe. As a result, and as recent history also tells us, whenever people have been forced to limit their family size, they have preferred to keep the male child and abandoned the female child, often before her birth.

Where is the equal number of missing women? This is the question human rights activists have been trying to ask for a long time.

:shocked::shocked::shocked:
wtf ..........

 

[Broccoli]

According to Finnish reporter Sami Sillanpää who lived and worked in China years (traveled across the country), there is plenty of families with daughters in rural areas, and government in those areas does not seem to be bothered forcing one child policy. One Chinese farmer was disappointed because he had six daughters and no sons.

 

[amoy]

Guys... girls are getting married late due to career but no logic of saying they are "left-overs".

Gone are the days when girls were forced to marry young.

u dont know how cruel life is unmarried men abv that age r also called leftovers. a silver lining - an older woman for younger man is a better match mentally n physically speaking, and more sexually appealing. women extremely sccessful in career r oftn not material for marriage - personal biased observation!



Sent from my 5910 using Tapatalk 2

 

[nimo_cn]

According to Finnish reporter Sami Sillanpää who lived and worked in China years (traveled across the country), there is plenty of families with daughters in rural areas, and government in those areas does not seem to be bothered forcing one child policy. One Chinese farmer was disappointed because he had six daughters and no sons.

Because it is never an one child policy, I have a sister, my uncle has a son and a daughter, my aunt has 5 children (2 sons and 3 daughters).

Only families living in urban area are only allowed to have one child

 

[satish007]

I want marry them many of them make top dollar,own couple apartments,and good looking but I speak english so i am popular and were occupied 15 years ago , china should be a Muslim country 4 wives allow. , look at Arnand he even can not speak good English and girls rush to him. Indian men should come to china you guys speak English and those left over are not that bad they just too busy in work and forget the age

 

[badguy2000]

my wife was 28,when she married me.......before that, her grandmother also was worried that She might become a "left over" .

 

[Armand2REP]

Maybe if they increased the age of consent from 14 to 18 like civilised countries it might make older women more valued.

 

[mylegend]

Women are also deem leftover in Japan if failed to marry before 30... It is not unique to China

 

[nimo_cn]

What gets my goat is why the girls are considered to be 'left overs'?

Why not boys too?

How do you know boys are not?

 

[nimo_cn]

@Ray

Why is India having one of the most distorted male-to-female ratios in the world without an one-child policy?

Where are the missing girls in India?