Published: September 1, 2023 1.52pm BST The Conversation

Author: Chih-Ling Liu Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Lancaster University

Disclosure statement: Chih-Ling Liu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Lancaster University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

 

China has a gender crisis. The country has a huge surplus of men – around 722 million compared to 690 million women in 2022. This is largely because of sex-selective abortions linked to China’s one-child policy, which ended in 2015.

Though popular belief is that the policy was strictly enforced, many Chinese couples managed to have more than one child by paying fines, accepting benefit deprivations, or proclaiming their membership of a minority ethnic group. Often, they chose to do so because their first child was a girl. The one-child policy lasted three and a half decades, replaced by the two-child policy in 2016 and the three-child policy in 2021. But even today, the belief that boys have more value than girls persists.

Tiếp tục đọc “‘I almost lost my will to live’: preference for sons is leaving young women in China exploited and abused” →