Chinese “Gendercide” Blots International Women’s Day Centennial

on March 15, 2011

Mikhail Bell
March 15, 2011

New Jersey Republican Congressman Chris Smith, joined by Chinese human rights activists, marked the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day by decrying the plight of “missing” and persecuted women in China.

Smith, a pivotal figure in passing federal anti-trafficking legislation, convened a March 7 press conference on Capitol Hill to spotlight Chinese women victimized by their government’s “one “child” policy, as well as other Asian women who are increasingly trafficked by Chinese men. Standing with Smith were Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, Chai Ling, a two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and Harry Wu, a human rights activist and survivor of the Chinese labor camp system, all gathered to denounce unconscionable state-sponsored violence against Chinese women.

Women around the world are starting businesses, running nations, and pursuing education, at an unprecedented rate. At the same time, shocking steps backward follow closely behind many stories of progress. In March 2010, the United Nations Development Programme released a sobering study that indicated an estimated 100 million girls in Asia were missing. The number, a lamentable commentary on the status of women, included female babies, adolescent girls, and women whose lives were taken due to reinforced societal preferences for boys. The report took an important step in uncovering horrors previously ensconced in a culture of silence and, often, complicity. Regrettably the international body’s approximation was likely too generous towards the perpetrators of violence against women.

The press conference unabashedly cited China’s one child policy as the primary culprit for victimizing women in China. Enacted less than forty years ago, the policy was aimed at stemming a population boom and a weak economy. Instead, the edict has led to what some are calling “gendercide.”

“[Women] have had perhaps their most fundamental right stripped away: the right to bear children,” Regina Littlejohn said.

With a male to female birth ratio of 120 to 100, Congressman Smith aptly called the policy, “The worst gender crime in the world today, and, in scale, certainly the most massive.”

Statistics suggest the problem will only worsen with time. According to China Daily newspaper, 13 million abortions are performed in China annually. And by 2020, twenty to forty million Chinese men will be unattached thereby hastening the systematic violation of female personhood, Chai Ling warned.

The dearth of unattached Chinese women has turned the eyes of Chinese men abroad to carry on their family line and find love. Consequently, women located in the neighboring countries, particularly North Korea, are becoming victims of Chinese human trafficking, primarily for sex and marriage. Through informal networks women seeking work outside their home nation are promised jobs, education, and a better life in China. However the overtures are an opaque ruse that entangles its victims in a web of control, abuse, and sometimes death. The women are forced into marriage or concubinage with little hope of escape. Separated from family, a common language, and familiar geography, women are at the mercy of their new husband or trafficker. Often the women, usually defectors and/or undocumented visitors, go unreported.

For Chinese women seeking to evade their government’s one child policy, penalties range from excessive fines (ten times the income of a dual income household) to sterilization to forced abortions. If the offending woman flees the country or province, her family may be subjected to physical violence, as one woman discovered when her husband was beaten senseless by local authorities. He is now permanently disabled.

In rural areas the policy is less stringent as parents may have two children if the eldest is a girl. Yet, the preference for boys makes being a member of the opposite sex precarious.

The press conference appealed to the U.S. government, United Nation Human Rights Council and the United Nations Population Fund, among several others, to help end China’s one child policy. These actors, they asserted, can effectively combat the evident attacks on unborn lives and human dignity. While their potential influence may be great, let us hope their will is strong. As the U.S. foreign aid budget faces cuts, diplomats will likely be forced to do more with much less.

Mao Tse-Tung once said, “Women hold up half the sky”. Yet the “half” of which he spoke is being systemically eliminated from the earth. Let us pray the next International Women’s Day brings greater encouragement and progress to often besieged women and girls of China.

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