Two years ago, Zhang Chuanxin and his wife could hardly hold
their heads high in their village as Zhang's mother kept
complaining about their failure to "carry on their family line" by
having a son.
Zhang, father of two daughters in Liugou Village of Huaiyuan
County in east China's Anhui
Province, however, found his life turned around in 2001 when
China launched a national "care for girls" campaign to help control
the gender imbalance in this world's most populous nation.
"Raising girls is as good as raising boys now," Zhang said,
attributing his improvement in living standards to the local
government's help, which is part of the campaign.
The changes have been great for the Zhangs.
After Huaiyuan was selected for the first trial of the "care for
girls'' campaign in 2001, Zhang was subsidized by the county family
planning committee with a four-wheel vehicle for transportation
services while his wife got an aid fund to grow grains and
vegetables at home.
Soon Zhang and his family built a new house, an achievement
Zhang said was unimaginable before when their family sheltered
themselves in two decaying rooms.
Like Zhang, households with only one or two daughters in the
county will get 2,000 yuan (US$241) in support funds and be exempt
from agricultural taxes and nine-year compulsory education fees for
their daughters, a preferential treatment totaling some 30,000 yuan
(US$3,623) until the girls are of marriageable age.
Officials said the campaign aimed to tackle the gender imbalance
among newborn babies and eliminate gender discrimination against
girls in many rural and underdeveloped areas.
Some Chinese demographers worry that the gender imbalance may
create havoc that will haunt the country for generations.
Although the Chinese government has banned gender selection of
newborn babies by ultrasound and selective induced abortion, some
doctors secretly provide such services for extra fees, sometimes as
high as 1,000 yuan (US$120).
Though the idea of "ladies first" is increasingly recognized in
urban Chinese cities, the saying "raising a daughter is like
watering someone else's fields" is deep-rooted among people in some
parts of China, especially in the countryside.
Under the influence of 2,000-year-old Confucian ideas, farmers
still believe that only sons can carry on their family names and
provide a better "insurance" for their old years.
In regions dominated by sex bias, illegal ultrasound scanning to
determine the sex of babies in the womb is common among quite a few
couples that would rather have a boy than a girl.
"The traditional Chinese thinking that men are more valuable
than women dominated the country for many centuries," said Pan
Guiyu, vice minister of the State Population and Family
Planning Commission.
"Some rural people just dumped female infants outside orphanages
immediately after their birth," Pan said.
She acknowledged that 99 percent of Chinese children adopted by
foreigners are girls and boys under the age of 10 have outnumbered
girls of the same age.
(Xinhua News Agency January 6, 2004)