China Men without women Jun 20th 2002 | BEIJING From The Economist print edition The consequence of family planning IT HAS been more than 20 years since China implemented its harsh yet effective family-planning policy. By limiting urban couples to a single child and most rural couples to two, China has managed to slow the growth of the world's largest population. Now, however, the government must figure out what to do about the policy's unintended consequence: a huge and potentially destabilising sex imbalance. Statistics just released based on the 2000 census disclose that, in the country as a whole, about 117 boys are born for every 100 girls. The imbalance is extraordinary in some areas, exceeding 135 for 100 in southern Hainan province. The reasons are easy to fathom. When couples were free to have half a dozen children, there was a natural mix of boys and girls. When limited to one or two, they worked the system to produce sons. At the benign extreme, a girl's birth might simply not be registered, in the hope that next time the couple would produce a male. More worrying is widespread sex-selective abortion. Cheap but effective ultrasound equipment is now available throughout China and, though the practice is illegal, it is routinely used for pre-natal sex determination. The abortion that apparently often follows is devoid of taboo in China and extremely easy to arrange. All this leads to worries about how society can function without enough women. The prospect of a large surplus of single men in China alarms Valerie Hudson, a professor at Brigham Young University in the United States. In a study to be published in the next issue of Harvard University's journal International Security, she notes that societies with large numbers of unmarried males tend to experience more crime, unrest and violence. While acknowledging that sex imbalance is only one of many factors influencing levels of violence, Miss Hudson points out that the 30m unhappy unmarried men China is likely to have by 2020 could become “kindling for forces of political revolution at home”. There could also be an impact outside China, she says. The government may decide to use the surplus men as a weapon for military adventurism and “actively desire to see them give their lives in pursuit of a national interest”. A terrifying thought indeed.