Female Infanticide in China: Causes, Policy, and Effects
This paper examines the practice of female infanticide in China, analyzing its historical and cultural origins in Confucian ideology and its intensification following the introduction of the One Child Policy in 1979. The paper discusses the legal framework China has established to address the problem, including marriage law, Women's Protection Law, and Maternal Health Care legislation, while noting inconsistent enforcement due to decentralization and corruption. It further explores the wide-ranging social effects of the resulting gender imbalance, including sex-selective abortion, abandonment of girls, rising female suicide rates, and demographic challenges that threaten long-term economic stability.
- Introduction: Scope and scale of female infanticide in China
- Confucianism and Historical Roots: Confucian male preference as historical foundation
- The One Child Policy: How the 1979 policy intensified infanticide
- Legal Framework: Laws enacted and enforcement failures
- Social Effects: Gender imbalance, suicide, orphanages, demographics
- Conclusion: Summary of causes and path toward solutions
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper moves logically from cultural history to policy to law to social consequences, building a coherent causal chain rather than presenting disconnected facts.
- It balances multiple source types — academic journals, international organizations, and news reports — giving the argument both scholarly grounding and contemporary relevance.
- Specific statistics (e.g., 60 million missing girls, 130 male births per 100 female births in Guangdong) anchor abstract claims in measurable evidence.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of layered causation: it establishes a pre-existing cultural condition (Confucian male preference), then shows how a state policy amplified that condition, and finally traces downstream social harms. This technique — identifying root cause, accelerant, and consequence — is a strong model for policy-analysis essays at the undergraduate level.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a striking UN statistic to establish stakes, then devotes separate sections to Confucian origins, the One Child Policy's mechanics, the legal response, and social effects before synthesizing in a conclusion. Each section builds on the previous one, making the argument cumulative. The conclusion identifies both the problem's persistence and the conditions needed for change, giving the paper a forward-looking close.
Introduction
In 2007, the United Nations Population Fund published a study arguing that there were 60 million "missing" girls in Asia, a direct result of female infanticide (Karabin, 2007). Infanticide, by definition, is the unlawful killing of very young children, and in some cultures this practice is carried out against female babies in particular. The result is that countries like China have a serious population imbalance, with many more males than females (BBC, 2012). This paper examines the issue of female infanticide in China, its causes, and what potential solutions there might be to this serious problem.
Confucianism and Historical Roots
Lee (1981) notes that female infanticide has long been practiced in China. Writing just after the introduction of the one-child policy, Lee observes that "this form of discrimination against women…persisted in varying degrees over hundreds of years." She outlines the techniques used to commit the crime: "drowning in 'baby-ponds', immersion in cold or boiling water, suffocation, strangulation, burying alive or more commonly abandonment or exposure." Even though the practice was widespread, few families would speak about it. Infant mortality was also a general concern, so it was often easy to conceal the crime because dead infants were not uncommon across a range of causes.
Lee's extensive study shows that the practice was common before the one-child policy came into effect. Female infanticide in China has its roots in Confucianism, one of China's dominant philosophical traditions. Confucianism carries a strong male bias, leading couples to want their first child to be a boy. Under Confucian values, boys are more desirable because they work and can therefore provide security to parents in old age, and males are important for ancestral rites (BBC, 2012). The implementation of the one-child policy in 1979 only aggravated the problem.
Works Cited
BBC. (2012). Female infanticide. British Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved October 31, 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/medical/infanticide_1.shtml
Goodenough, P. (2008). China's 'one-child policy' results in forced abortion, infanticide. CNS News.com. Retrieved October 31, 2012 from http://cnsnews.com/news/article/chinas-one-child-policy-results-forced-abortion-infanticide
Kane, P. (1999). China's one child family policy. British Medical Journal, 319(7215), 992–994.
Karabin, S. (2007). Infanticide, abortion responsible for 60 million girls missing in Asia. Fox News. Retrieved October 31, 2012 from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,281722,00.html
Lee, B. (1981). Female infanticide in China. Historical Reflections, 8(3), 163–177.
Transparency International. (2012). Corruption Perceptions Index. Transparency International. Retrieved October 31, 2012 from http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/
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