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Femicide, or the systematic killing of females, is considered to be particularly severe in China as a result of the country’s traditional son preference and restrictive family planning policies. Femicide in China can occur prenatally by means of sex-selective abortion or postnatally through female infanticide and discrimination against girls in health care. Although the phenomenon is more commonly known as “gendercide in China”, such a label lacks accuracy because gendercide, by definition, can involve the systematic killing of men (i.e., androcide) as well.

Background
Many Chinese couples desire to have sons because they can carry on the family name and provide support and security to their aging parents later in life. On the contrary, a daughter is expected to leave her parents upon marriage to join and care for her husband’s family. In rural households, which constitute almost half of the Chinese population, males are additionally valuable for performing agricultural work and manual labor.

China’s family planning laws restrict the number of children each couple can have. Under the one-child policy, a subset of Chinese families can have no more than one child, whereas a two-child limit applies to parents who meet certain criteria (e.g., if either the mother or the father is an only child, or if the couple belong to an ethnic minority). Couples who exceed their birth quotas are subject to fines, which are usually a multiple of their own annual income or the per capita annual income of their local region. Moreover, children born in violation of the one-child policy, often referred to as "heihaizi" in China, are not allowed to register in the national household registration system, which prevents them from receiving education, health care, and other public services. These deterrents, when coupled with Chinese society’s longstanding male preference, can prompt parents to eliminate their daughters.

Sex-selective abortion
Sex-selective abortion is a primary form of femicide in China. Since no quantitative, nationwide data on the actual prevalence of sex-selective abortion are currently available, researchers have mainly relied on sex ratio at birth (SRB) to assess the nature and extent of the practice. The natural SRB of a human population is 1.03–1.07, meaning that 103–107 males are born for every 100 females. While China’s SRB was at 1.074—a somewhat normal level—when the one-child policy took effect in 1980, it rose steadily for over two decades, peaked at 1.212 in 2004, and has slightly declined in recent years, which some scholars believe is due to a partial weakening of the traditional son preference. According to an official from the National Health and Family Planning Commission, China’s SRB in 2014 was 1.159. Moreover, a 2005 intercensus survey demonstrated pronounced differences in sex ratio across provinces, ranging from 1.04 in Tibet to 1.43 Jiangxi. Zhu, Lu, and Therese (2009), who published a report on the aforementioned survey, wrote that “sex selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males,” a statement that has found support in several regional demographic studies. In rural households, female fetuses of parents who already have one or more daughters face the highest risk of abortion.

It is worthwhile to note that some scholars have identified factors other than sex-selective abortion as the main cause of China’s persistently high sex ratios. Zeng and colleagues (1993), for example, contended that at least half of the nation’s gender imbalance arises from the underreporting of female births. Oster (2005) once attributed the abnormal sex ratios to the hepatitis B virus, but she later retracted this claim when opposing evidence emerged.

In China, sex-selective abortions are preceded by prenatal sex discernment, which is achieved, in most cases, through obstetric ultrasonography. In 1979, China manufactured its first B-scan ultrasound machine, which became widely available by the mid-1990s. Although the intended purpose of the machines was to monitor pregnancies and to detect fetal abnormalities, many couples have used them to determine the sex of their child.

On September 19, 1986, the Ministry of Health and the National Population and Family Planning Commission jointly released a notice prohibiting prenatal sex determination in China (except when it is performed to diagnose hereditary disorders), and the two state agencies issued similar decrees in 1989 and 1993 to ensure higher compliance rates. The ban on prenatal sex determination was formally written into the Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care in 1994 and the Law of Population and Family Planning in 2001 (the latter piece of legislation also forbids sex-selective abortions for non-medical reasons). Nonetheless, some commentators have questioned the effectiveness of such legal measures, citing reasons such as lenient punishment for violators and the pervasiveness of private ultrasound service providers to explain the common occurrence of sex-selective abortions in China.

Female infanticide
Under natural circumstances, infant mortality rate is higher for boys than for girls. In China, however, the opposite is true, and a large portion of the excess female deaths take place within 24 hours after birth, which can be interpreted as an outcome of female infanticide. Banister (2004), in her literature review on China’s shortage of girls, suggested that there has been a resurgence in the prevalence of female infanticide following the introduction of the one-child policy. On the other hand, many researchers have argued that female infanticide is rare in China today, especially since the government has outlawed the practice. Currently, the relative contribution of female infanticide to the overall issue of femicide in China remains unclear, as coverage of this topic has mostly appeared in the popular press where individual cases are presented. For instance, in July 2012, the Daily Mail reported that a newborn girl, with her placenta and umbilical cord still attached, was found in a trash can in Liaoning province; the two-inch-deep wound across her throat indicated that she was a victim of infanticide.

Sex discrimination in health care
During infancy and early childhood, girls may face sex discrimination in health care and thus have a lower chance of survival. In a 2004 study conducted in a rural Chinese county, Li, Zhu, and Feldman found that “when children became ill, parents tended to consider illnesses of boys to be more serious than those of girls and consequently were more likely to seek medical treatment for boys than for girls,” and that “once parents decided to seek medical treatment for their children, they tended to spend more money on it, and transferred children to better hospitals for boys than for girls.”

Other forms of postnatal femicide
From age four, survival rate does not differ significantly across gender, which implies that femicide might not happen in a large scale beyond early childhood. However, organizations such as All Girls Allowed and Women’s Rights Without Frontiers have ascribed China’s high female suicide rate to its coercive family planning policies and gender inequality. A 2013 human rights report by the U.S. Department of State revealed that there are about 590 female suicides in China per day, a number that is three times higher than that for men.

Missing women of China
As a result of femicide, there are an estimated 30–40 million more men than women in China today. This female deficit is expected to generate a wide range of adverse social, political, and economic consequences. For a detailed discussion on this topic, see Missing women of China.