China's One child policy gives birth to more boys and criminals

[Kire]

12 January, 2005
CHINA
One child policy gives birth to more boys and criminals
Skewed sex ratio might lead to rising crime rates.

Beijing (AsiaNews) – A few days ago China’s population crossed the 1.3 billion mark. Experts expect it to reach 1.43 by 2020. However, there are concerns that it will be unusually skewed towards males.

A government demographer, Li Weixiong, said that by 2020 there will be 40 million men who will not be able to marry for lack of a partner. This is likely to lead to social instability.

Several Chinese sociologists expect such a skewed sex ratio to inevitably lead to a higher crime rate. Since Chinese society frowns upon unmarried men, the latter are likely to form gangs and engage in aggressive and antisocial behaviour

Data already show high levels of criminal activity among the young. In 2000, 35 per cent of all sentences for violent crimes (220,000) were against men under the age of 26.

To counter this trend, Professor Li Yongping, a demographer from Beijing University, has launched a campaign in the cities and the countryside to abolish the 23-year-old one-child policy.

The policy has led to selective abortions of female foetuses because of families’ traditional preference for boys.

More: http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=2324

[SheilaT]

1. I'm not so sure about

more criminals, but somewhere down the road the shortage of females is going to create problems. I wonder if the imbalance will be enough to shift power to women in any significant way?

Or maybe what will happen will be a rise in the divorce rate and women will remarry more readily than men. That's one possible solution. Of course, meanwhile, at any given time there'll be an excess of unmarried men. Perhaps legal prostitution will be the solution.

Think about what life has been like in frontier areas where women have been in short supply.

[liontamer]

2. I think sex ratio is being scapegoated

Wouldn't we expect a third of violent crime to be committed by males under 26? This seems like china's way of blaming a lack of "traditional values" for all their problems.