MIM Notes 230                   March 15, 2001

Female infanticide, traffic in wimmin increase in state-capitalist 
China

On 14 February 2001 the Los Angeles Times published a front page, 
column one article describing the resurgence of patriarchal 
atrocities such as female infanticide and wife-buying in state-
capitalist China. Since the counter-revolutionaries around Deng 
Xiaoping took power in 1976, backwards ideas about the value of 
boys and girls have been allowed to flourish -- and in some cases 
promoted. In 1995, because of the selective abortion, fatal 
neglect, or outright killing of baby girls, there were 118 boys 
under the age of 5 in China for every 100 girls.

This imbalance has created "a huge lack of marriageable women," 
especially in poor countryside areas. Never married men between 
the ages of 25 and 39 outnumbered never-married wimmin 4 to 1 in 
1995. Getting married and having children is still a strong 
cultural imperative in China. The backwards practice of a 
brideprice has also returned. A big wedding banquet and gifts for 
the bride's family can cost $3000-$5000.

Together with an increase in criminal activity like kidnapping and 
a general deterioration of the status of wimmin in the 
countryside, this has created a market for brides, who often sell 
for less than $1000. According to official Chinese government 
statistics (likely underestimates), 7,660 wimmin were rescued from 
kidnappers in 1999. Another 6,800 wimmin were reported abducted or 
missing and not found.

One farmer interviewed said, "If you have a boy, then yours is a 
good household. Without a son, who will inherit my property? 
Without a son, who will carry on my name?"

The Times grudgingly admits that the Maoists effectively 
campaigned against such patriarchal ideas and practices. It quotes 
a social science professor from Hong Kong: "Mao, for all his 
failings [in the eyes of the bourgeoisie], did say that 'women 
hold up half the sky,' ... and it did have an impact. We 
Westerners tend to pooh-pooh this as window-dressing, but it 
wasn't. It took rather a strong cultural campaign to try and 
change something so deep." Through education and propaganda, 
skewed sex ratios improved after Liberation in 1949 through the 
1970s.

The Deng Xiaoping clique, however, toned down the struggle against 
patriarchy in order to achieve undisrupted "modernization," i.e. 
capitalist development. The reinstitution of capitalism itself 
also played a big role in degrading the status of wimmin. 

The return of family-farming in the countryside gave farmers the 
incentive to have more boys who were perceived to be better 
workers and who did not leave the area when they got married. 
Also, the destruction of collective farming revived concerns about 
property and inheritance.(1)

In order to deal with the unemployment which appeared on the heels 
of capitalist reforms, official "Communist" Party organs began to 
preach old patriarchal shibboleths about wimmin not being suited 
for certain jobs (men are stronger, smarter, etc.). This justified 
their shift out of the job market and overturned some of the 
greatest advances wimmin made under Maoism, in terms of education, 
participation in production, and politics.(2)

The Times pins the rise in female infanticide on the one-child 
policy adopted in 1979 (families are given subsidies if they have 
only one child and are penalized if they have more than two). But 
the one child policy alone cannot explain the rise -- after all, 
if families were happy with one girl, there would be no problem. 
It's the state-capitalist regime's emphasis on "apolitical" 
capitalist development that has created the female infanticide 
epidemic, fueled wife-selling and prostitution, and generally 
degraded the status of wimmin in China.

Notes:

1. The Political Economy of Capitalist Counter-Revolution in 
China, photocopy edition available from MIM, pp. 188-192.

2. Ibid, pp.179-187.