At present, among the population below 19 in China, there are 23.77 million fewer women than men, which means that after 10 years, there will be 20 million more men of marriageable age than women of the same age, and tens of millions of men of school age may face "difficulty in getting a wife"-1the ratio of men to women is out of balance for more than 20 years-at present, all over the country except Tibet. Nowadays, in rural areas of China, especially in remote areas, older unmarried young men are not uncommon; In rural primary schools and kindergartens, the proportion of boys has increased significantly; In the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Southeast Fujian and other manufacturing and service areas, there is a serious shortage of young female workers aged 18-25. In the past, garment factories "full of young girls" had to be replaced by some male workers ... Some people say that this reflects that "the era of more men and fewer women" has arrived. The Blue Book of Society published by China Academy of Social Sciences in 20 10 shows that the sex ratio of the population under 9/kloc-0 in China is seriously unbalanced. By 2020, there will be 24 million more men of marriageable age than women in China. It is estimated that there will be tens of millions of men of school age facing the "difficulty of marrying a wife". "The high sex ratio at birth in China has been going on for more than 20 years, and the cumulative effect has begun." Yuan Xin, a professor at the Institute of Population and Development, School of Economics, Nankai University, said that it is a law of natural evolution to coordinate the proportion of men and women. However, in China, the imbalance of sex ratio at birth has become a social "chronic disease". The birth sex ratio is also called the baby sex ratio. Under normal circumstances, for every 100 girls born, there are 103 to 107 boys born. Because the mortality rate of boys is higher than that of girls, the number of men and women tends to be equal at the age of marriage and childbearing. So the normal value stipulated by the United Nations is 103- 107. Since 1980s, the sex ratio at birth in China has been high. The third national census 1982, sex ratio at birth108.47; 1990, it rose to11; In 2000, it jumped to119; When sampling 1% population in 2005, it was as high as 120.49, exceeding the warning line 13 percentage points. That is to say, compared with women, there is a surplus of men 13%. "In just over 20 years, areas with high sex ratio at birth have spread rapidly from east to west and from rural to urban areas, covering almost all parts of the country." Yuan Xin said, 1982, only 18 provinces have a high sex ratio at birth. In 2005, except Tibet, the sex ratio at birth was high in other provinces, among which 3 provinces exceeded 130. Li Bin, director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, said that according to the national statistical bulletin, the sex ratio at birth in China was 1 19.45 in 2009, which was1.1percentage point lower than that in 2008, showing the first decline in recent years. However, on the whole, the sex ratio is still high. 1 1 2 There are many problems with the increase of bachelors-the pain of marriage squeeze lies not only in the emergence of a large number of bachelors, but also in the fact that the consequences are mainly borne by the poor. "In recent years, among the people who registered to get married in Beijing, the age gap between couples aged 25-39 is larger than that before 10, and the age gap is not less than 65440. According to the relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, judging from the situation of marriage registration in civil affairs departments all over the country in recent years, the widening marriage age gap between men and women has gradually become a trend. " The direct impact of the long-term imbalance of the sex ratio at birth is the prominent phenomenon of' marriage gradient extrusion'. Tian Xueyuan, executive vice president of the China Population Society, said that according to the demographic data of the National Bureau of Statistics, there are currently 23.77 million more men than women in the population aged 0- 19. In the next 20 years, the average number of newly married men will be 654.38+0.2 million more than that of women. When there is a shortage of marriageable women of the same age, men will choose their spouses from young women, and when they are squeezed to a certain extent, they will develop into other fields. Men in rich areas will find rural girls, while men in underdeveloped areas will find women. "Married surplus men" will eventually settle in the low-income poor class. Tian Xueyuan worriedly pointed out that family is the foundation of society, and there is not even a family, let alone a harmonious society. The sharp increase of men who can't get married will endanger the stability of marriage and family, and greatly increase the illegal and criminal acts such as buying and selling marriage, abducting and selling women, prostitution and whoring. According to the statistics of Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Bureau, among the nearly 200,000 foreign wives in the province, 36,000 women were trafficked, mostly from underdeveloped areas such as Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Hubei. In the remote mountainous areas bordering Guangxi and Vietnam, most men are poor and uneducated, so it is difficult to find wives locally. Many people are single all their lives. From 1992, some Vietnamese women entered these areas through illegal intermediaries, "married" local elderly men, and later had children. Over the years, although the relevant government departments have strengthened management, illegal marriages have been repeatedly banned. The pain of marriage squeeze lies not only in the number of bachelors produced, but also in the fact that the consequences are mainly borne by the poor. Tian Xueyuan said that some people proposed to introduce foreign brides to solve the problem of "leftover men", which may have considerable effect in a country with a small population, but for a big country with a population of 654.38+300 million, "importing brides" is unrealistic and a drop in the bucket, which cannot fundamentally solve the problem. The imbalance between men and women will also bring employment squeeze. A clothing boss who travels frequently to and from Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai and other places said that at present, the ratio of male to female workers in some garment factories has reached 4: 6, and many textile factories have closed down because they cannot recruit female workers. According to the original and new analysis, the surplus of male labor force will enhance the competition in the labor market and aggravate the employment difficulties of women; In some industries and occupations, there may be a shortage of women and men should replace them; Due to the surplus labor force, some male jobs will be subject to fierce competition from men. Yuan Xin emphasized that the long-term imbalance of sex ratio at birth and the aging population in China will aggravate the unreasonable population structure and threaten the ecological security of the population. In the future, the social class structure, consumption structure and organizational structure will be more dominated by men, and its far-reaching harm will be no less than the population expansion in the middle of last century. Behind the direct "killer"-"missing girl" is a "one-stop" black market from illegal identification of fetal sex to illegal artificial termination of pregnancy. China's traditional concept of son preference has lasted for thousands of years. Why is there a serious imbalance between men and women in the past 30 years? "The declining birthrate and the popularity of B-ultrasound are the direct reasons. Zhai Zhenwu, dean of the School of Social and Population Studies at Renmin University of China, said that since the mid-1980s, South Korea, Japan, China and other Asian countries or regions that prefer boys to girls have generally experienced the problem of high sex ratio at birth in the process of declining fertility rate-because B-ultrasound equipment began to be popularized at that time. After 4 months of pregnancy, many people identify the sex of the fetus by B-ultrasound, keep the male fetus and induce the female fetus. The imbalance of sex ratio is prominent in rural areas. In the past 20 years, considering the differences between urban and rural areas, the country's fertility policy in rural areas is actually a rule that boys will stop when they are born: the first child gives birth to a boy, and no second child will be born; If the first child is a girl, you can have another child. "If the first child is a girl, the second child will do everything possible to have a boy. "According to the original introduction, previous censuses and spot checks on 1% population found a rule that the more children there are, the higher the sex ratio of the birth population. Among the population born in 2005, the sex ratio of the first birth 108.4438+0 is high, but not serious. The second child suddenly rose to143.22; The birth sex ratio of the third child and above is higher, reaching 152.88. " Some villages did not even give birth to the planned second child girl within three years. "Behind the' missing girl' is a huge illegal fetal sex identification market. According to reports, in the border areas of Jiangxi, Hubei and Anhui, illegal sex identification activities have changed from concealment to semi-publicity, from "waiting for door-to-door service" to "door-to-door service", and the pregnancy time during identification has been shortened from more than 16 weeks to about 12 weeks, from a local small scale to an organized cross-regional large-scale action. In some villages where migrant workers gather, billboards such as "B-ultrasound", "abortion in big month" and "drug abortion" can be seen everywhere, providing "one-stop" services from illegal identification of fetal sex to artificial termination of pregnancy. These "B-ultrasound black markets" operate in two main ways. One is the front shop and the back factory. Open gynecological clinics and even pharmacies in the street to attract business, and do B-ultrasound at the home of the residential building behind, and the appraisal fee is about 200 yuan. If the girl doesn't want it, she will have an operation with a doctor in the hospital. The second is to introduce to the hospital to identify the sex of the fetus. In order to escape the attack of the relevant government departments and avoid the confiscation of hundreds of thousands of B-ultrasound machines, some intermediary clinics use their relationships to take their clients to big hospitals, and learn the truth from the hints of "relatives" doctors under the guise of checking fetal position. If they need an abortion, they will go back to the clinic for surgery. " Science and technology is a double-edged sword. Zhai Zhenwu said that with the progress of science and technology, there will be more and more new and easily popularized sex selection technologies and induced abortion technologies, and it is urgent to strengthen supervision. The preference for boys over girls is the bane-the preference for boys over girls in the concept of fertility is a problem of inheritance and "face", and it is also a problem of women's weak position. "The ashes can't build a wall, and the daughter can't afford her parents. "The traditional view is that the preference for boys in rural areas is to solve the labor problem, increase income and provide for the elderly. At present, the main difficulty of rural old-age security is economic difficulty. The daughter will get married when she is older, and the son (daughter-in-law) who lives beside her can provide for the elderly. However, a survey report on population problems in underdeveloped areas such as Taihu County, susong county and Qianshan County shows that in recent years, having boys is not better than having girls in economic contribution. Young people in these areas basically go out to work, with an average annual income of 8,500 yuan for men and about 2,000 yuan for families. The average annual income of women is 6300 yuan, which is about 4000 yuan for families. When it comes to marriage, the dowry of young women is basically earned by themselves, and the parents of young men need to invest 30,000 to 40,000 yuan. Therefore, boys' preference for boys cannot be simply attributed to economic problems. In fact, in China coastal and other wealthy areas, the developed economic conditions and the increasingly perfect social security system have not effectively curbed the rising trend of the sex ratio at birth. "The root lies in the traditional concept of son preference." Tian Xueyuan said that in the eyes of many people, having boys and girls is a matter of carrying on the family line and "saving face". For families with rapidly increasing wealth, the question of "Who will leave a rich family fortune" makes people's consciousness of "carrying on the family line" more active and intense than ever before. In some areas where family and clan concepts are serious, having a boy means that the family is constantly burning incense, which means that the family is powerful. Women with sons can avoid being accused of "disappointing" by their families, and sons can improve their family and social status. Yang Juhua, a professor at the School of Social and Population Studies of Renmin University, said that the gender difference caused by gender inequality is one of the important reasons why people prefer sons to daughters. At present, women in China basically catch up with men in education, but other indicators are obviously behind men. In economic life, although women participate in social labor extensively, their professional prestige and income are not high. When enrolling students, men are often chosen instead of women under the same conditions; In political life, women's participation in politics is far below the average participation level of men and women in the international community. Among the heads of state organs, party organizations, enterprises and institutions, women only account for 1/5. The imbalance of sex ratio needs strong intervention-the urgent task is to crack down on technical deviance, and the fundamental solution is to promote gender equality and improve women's social status. The long-term serious imbalance of sex ratio is a "usury" shouldered by society and a century-old plan to eliminate the danger before the disaster breaks out. Luo Mai, director of the National population and family planning commission Sex Ratio Management Office, said that comprehensive measures should be taken to solve the problem of unbalanced sex ratio at birth. "Now when it comes to the imbalance of sex ratio at birth, people think of the problems of' difficulty in getting a wife' and' being single'. In fact, this is to consider the problem with men as the center, rather than just focusing on men. " Yang Juhua pointed out that the problem of high sex ratio at birth is essentially a problem of women's development rights. Due to the deep-rooted traditional ideas and the influence of some current policy factors, the explicit and implicit unfair access to resources between the two sexes is very common, and the weak position of women is still obvious. Therefore, it is a "radical" policy to promote the fair and balanced development of both sexes and improve the social status of women. According to reports, since 1990, the National Population and Family Planning Commission has carried out activities such as "New Style of Marriage and Childbearing" and "Caring for Girls" nationwide, established an interest-oriented mechanism that is conducive to the healthy growth of girls, provided old-age security for the one-child households and dual-female households, and made the people feel that giving birth to girls is not a loss. In recent years, the state has promoted the rural old-age security system, improved the ability of family and social old-age security, and promoted the change of patriarchal thinking from material security and concept. In 2009, the sex ratio of the population born in 14 key provinces (regions) showed a downward trend. Zhai Zhenwu believes that it is urgent to crack down on technical deviance and rectify the "two evils" (illegal fetal sex identification and illegal sex selection for artificial termination of pregnancy). Wu Haiting, a lawyer of Beijing Law Firm, said that although China's current relevant laws prohibit "two non-behaviors", they have not dealt a heavy blow. For example, for those who are not qualified to practice medicine and engage in "two evils", the law stipulates that criminal responsibility shall be investigated according to the crime of illegal medical practice, but only administrative punishment is stipulated for medical personnel who participate in "two evils", and the fine amount is only 1 000-30 thousand yuan, and the criminal responsibility is not clear. South Korea has also experienced a high sex ratio at birth. To this end, Korean legislation stipulates that medical personnel who use B-ultrasound to identify the sex of the fetus and choose sex to induce labor will be fined 30 million won, equivalent to 200,000 yuan; The second is to revoke the doctor's license and not to practice medicine for life; The third is to bear criminal responsibility. If the circumstances are serious, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years. Wu Haiting believes that China can learn from these practices. 4 4 (People's Daily)