Death of Women to Leave 24M Chinese Men Unwed

More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without a woman to wed by 2020, and a Chinese proclivity to abort female fetuses is a major contributing factor, a major study has found.

Gender imbalance among newborns is the most serious demographic problem facing the country's population of 1.3 billion, the study by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences says.

"Sex-specific abortions remained extremely commonplace," the academy said, "especially in rural areas,'' where the cultural preference for boys over girls is strongest.

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A shortage of women of marriageable age is projected to hit men in rural areas of China particularly hard, a study says.

Ultrasound scans, introduced in the late 1980s, have increased sex-specific abortions in a country where there has been a traditional bias toward male children, largely because their greater earning potential is seen as increasing their ability to look after aging parents.

The latest figures show that for every 100 girls born in China, 119 boys are born, the academy says in a new book, according to a report on the study today in the official Global Times. However, the study said that in some areas, the ratio was as high as 130 males for every 100 females, a report by the Mirror Evening newspaper said.

A researcher interviewed by the Global Times, Wang Guangzhou, said that men living in less-prosperous areas of China could find themselves marrying later in life or remaining unmarried all their lives.

"The chance of getting married will be rare if a man is more than 40 years old in the countryside,'' Wang told paper. "They will be more dependent on social security as they age and have fewer household resources to rely on."

The government policy introduced in 1979 of encouraging married couples not to have more than one child has contributed to the problem, the study said, as well as China's insufficient social security system.

There is also a reluctance among young urban Chinese to have a first or second child, the BBC reported.

Abductions and trafficking of women are "rampant" in areas with excess numbers of men, The Global Times reported, citing findings by China's National Population and Family Planning Commission.

Illegal marriages and forced prostitution were also problems in those areas, the paper said in a report by Agence France-Presse.