Among the many complications it has encountered along its now 30-year march down the path of so-called “reform and opening up” (i.e., capitalization and global integration), China is now projected to have a surplus of 20 to 30 million males by the year 2020. While this trend has been driven in large part by the strong socio-cultural preference for male children who, according to Chinese social norms, are expected to care for their parents after retirement, the ever-increasing gender imbalance is not purely a modern phenomenon. The means to this skewed demographic end, however, have been refigured through the introduction of new technology. In Imperial China (221 BCE - 1911 CE), dramatic gender imbalances were the result of widespread female infanticide and sex-selected infant neglect. Today, the male surplus is the result of sex-selective abortion, made possible by the introduction of neonatal ultrasonography in the late 1970s. This major unintended consequence, one that has dramatic implications for the world’s most populous nation and one that raises important ethical questions, is an issue that our CSPO-indoctrinated brains cannot allow us to pass over without some critical discussion.
Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the launching of a new development strategy by Deng Xiaoping shortly thereafter, science and technology were taken as a core principle of China’s post-Mao development strategy. It was this emphasis on S&T that led to China’s first encounter with the ultrasound B-scanner in 1979. Ultrasounds were imported en masse over the next several years as a tool for fetal health diagnosis, monitoring inner uterine device (IUD) insertions and fetal development. But, within the Chinese context, as well as in India, Bangladesh, South Korea, and other societies with a son-preference, the ultrasound was quickly transformed into an inadvertent facilitator of sex-selective abortion. While it has been made illegal for doctors in China to reveal the sex of a fetus to parents, this unenforceable law is easily circumvented through bribery and other means.
Essentially, the cultural preference for sons that pervaded many traditional societies for centuries is being revisited in China and elsewhere in more “modern” terms. But how are we to feel about this? One point to keep in mind is that we mustn’t be too quick to judge China’s son-preference as the result of androcentrism or patriarchal bias. Surely these are factors, but sex-selective abortion is not, on the whole, a practice driven by amorality or immorality. Rather, it is driven by extreme social and cultural pressures that have been exacerbated by China’s introduction of fertility restrictions and compounded by inadequate retirement infrastructure for the country’s growing elderly population.
Personally, I am a strong believer in a woman’s right to choose,
which, caught up in the United States’ religion versus science debate,
we often forget is not just about the right to have an abortion, but also
the right not to (China went through a period in which state-forced
abortions were not uncommon in the early 1980s). From my perspective, while
I see a critical difference between abortion and infanticide, the idea of
sex-selection abortion still makes me a bit uncomfortable. But why? What
is the difference between sex-selective abortion and a couple’s choice
to have an abortion after learning their child will have a developmental
disorder or a severe genetic problem? These are not just technological questions.
Nor are they simply social. They also are fully cultural. They will not
be answered by an attempt to get others to adhere to your own ideology;
rather, the best way forward may be through understanding and open, critical
discussion, as President Obama attempted at his commencement speech at Notre
Dame last week. The case of China’s growing gender imbalance provides
a good starting point.
To read more about this major unintended consequence of neonatal ultrasonography in contemporary China, see “Bare-sticks and Rebellion: The drivers and implications of China’s Reemerging Gender Imbalance,” forthcoming in Technology and Society. For questions and comments, Britt can be reached at britt.l.crow@gmail.com.
