The Scrutinator

Last weekend we watched National Geographic's documentary China's Lost Girls. (Bride of Scrutinator My wife rented it.)

China has a long-standing cultural preference for boys: they stay home, inheriting from the parents and taking care of them in their old age. But China's repressive one-child policy has turned this into the murder of millions of Chinese girls.

From the documentary:

• Today there are 13 million fewer girls than boys in China.
• By 2020, at the current rate, there will be 40 million fewer girls.**
• All kinds of sick things are coming out of this imbalance, from the abduction of women to the obesity of many only children. One woman was abducted and sold as a wife for $435.

Do the math: tens of thousands of girls adopted out to other countries. Perhaps hundreds of thousands abandoned to orphanages. That still leaves millions statistically unaccounted for. Many of those are dead through abortion, though technically it's illegal for a couple to learn their baby's gender. I wonder how many are killed after they're born.

The documentary took a very upbeat tone, following parents and focusing on their joy. It avoided criticizing the Chinese government directly.

I'm baffled by all the tip-toeing around this brutal Chinese government. Who will call it what it is? Mass murder as a direct result of government policy. Keep in mind that this government descends from mass-murdering Mao. (The documentary, to its credit, points out the linkage, though not Mao's bloodbath.)

Some say this imbalance could lead to men organizing an army, channeling their energies destructively. Though that's possible, it seems more likely that its destructive outworkings would be less organized, like crime and addiction. The strong cultural preference for boys is to keep them at home, too, taking care of their parents in their old age.

Not forgiving any perpetrator's actions, but the continuing strong preference for boys as parents' "social security" says something about people's confidence in their government's care.

More:

• An earlier documentary shows the conditions in China's orphanages: The Dying Rooms.
• More on The Dying Rooms from Oprah.
• Perhaps as many as 17 million girls dead. They claim that great strides have been made. Forgive my skepticism.

By The Scrutinator @ 12:39 PM