The dangers of Asia's preference for sons
Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. Den Boer IHT Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Surplus males
PROVO, Utah When security scholars survey the most worrisome potential conflicts in
Asia, they should keep in mind a variable to which they might not have given much
thought: the sex ratios of the countries involved.
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The most populous nations in Asia, including China, India and Pakistan, have acted
upon their deep cultural preference for sons by culling daughters from their
populations through the use of ever more efficient sex selective technologies.
Amniocentesis and ultrasound as a precursor to sex selective abortion have been joined
by sperm-sorting technologies that increase the probability of conceiving a son.
.
The identification of the sex of a fetus and sex selective abortion are both strictly
illegal in all these countries. But legalities tend to yield before strong, socially
approved and culturally rooted desires, and have proved a surmountable barrier.
Doctors or technicians may not legally be able to tell you the sex of your fetus, but
for a bribe they can smile or frown, light a cigarette or crush one out as they
examine your ultrasound.
.
The technology to select male offspring before birth began to spread in the late
1980s, and the birth sex ratios began to rise. In China, the official ratio is 117
boys born for every 100 girls, but the reality is probably 120 or more. In India, the
official birth sex ratio is 111-114 boys per 100 girls, but spot checks show ratios of
up to 156 boys per 100 girls in some locales. For comparison, normal birth sex ratios
are 105-107 boys born per 100 girls.
.
The mortality rate for girls and young women is also much higher than normal in these
countries, further exacerbating the deficit. For example, the U.S. Bureau of the
Census estimates excess deaths among Chinese females in the first year of life alone
to be close to half a million. In India, almost one million more girls than boys die
in the first five years of life.
.
The sheer scale on which daughters are being culled from Asia is unprecedented in
history. But if societies are indifferent to the fate of these daughters, then let us
turn our attention to the fate of their prized sons.
.
The bottom line is that there will be appreciably more young men in their societies
than young women. Using conservative estimates, in 2020 India will have about 28
million more young males (aged 15 to 34) than young females. In China, the figure will
be closer to 30 million; in Pakistan it will probably be 3-5 million.
.
In China there is a term for such young men: guang gun-er, or "bare branches" on the
family tree - males who will probably not raise families of their own because the
girls who should have grown up to become their wives fell victim to female
infanticide.
.
The "bare branch" populations in China and India, comprising about 12 to 15 percent of
their young adult males, will be overwhelmingly poor, uneducated, unskilled and
possibly unemployed. Throughout the millennia in which son preference has been
effected in China, India and Pakistan, the bare branches have been one of the most
volatile elements in society, frequently causing great social instability through
crime and violence, and when uniting in a common movement, an important threat to the
government itself.
.
In Chinese history, for example, the Nien Rebellion, the Black Flag Army, the Boxers,
the Eight Trigrams Rebellion and even the famous Shaolin fighting monks were all
essentially bare-branch collectives doing what they did best: using force to acquire
the resources otherwise denied them.
.
The Nien, for example, came from an impoverished province where the sex ratio was 129
to 100. They began as petty bandits and smugglers, but soon coalesced into larger
criminal brotherhoods. At the height of the rebellion, their leaders could boast of an
army of more than 100,000 bare branches, which controlled an area populated by almost
six million persons.
.
Bare branches tend to congregate in the cities in vast "floating populations." For
example, in China's liudong renkou, or floating population, 80 percent are under age
35, and 72 to 80 percent are male. China is already experiencing a tremendous increase
in crime, and 50 to 90 percent of the crimes in the large cities are committed by
bare-branch migrants. Over the course of history, Chinese rulers' response to the bare
branches was to battle them, expel them or co-opt them as soldiers. All Chinese
governments have understood that the bare branches are a formidable club - if it is in
your hand it can be useful, but poised over your head it is a serious security threat.
.
Indeed, the very type of government to which a nation can aspire is affected by a sex
ratio abnormally favoring males. History demonstrates that such societies cannot be
governed by anything less than an authoritarian political system. Furthermore,
high-sex-ratio societies typically develop a foreign policy style crafted to retain
the respect and allegiance of its bare branches - a swaggering, belligerent,
provocative style.
.
Societies with a very low status for women cannot emulate normal sex-ratio societies
either in terms of the form of government or in their tendency towards peacefulness.
Any attempt by normal sex-ratio societies to project their own security logic onto a
high sex-ratio society leads to miscalculation. Abnormal sex ratios do not in
themselves cause conflict - the sex ratio of Rwanda in 1994 was normal, for example -
but they definitely create societal instability and severely aggravate conflict when
it does arise.
.
Peace and democracy may be as elusive as girl babies in this region where almost 40
percent of humanity resides.
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Valerie M. Hudson is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University,
Provo, Utah. Andrea M. Den Boer is a lecturer in international politics at the
University of Kent, Canterbury, England. Their book "Bare Branches: Security
Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population" is published this month.
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