Gendercide in China and India

China and North India should be ashamed of not valuing daughters. An article last year in the Economist popularized the term gendercide to describe the widespread practice in China and a few Indian states of sex selective abortions targetting girls. The 2010 Chinese census reports an imbalance of 118 boys for every 100 girls among newborns. That's not as bad as the mid-decade high in China of 124 boys for every girls among the 1-4 age group. In India only Haryana and Punjab have gender imbalances that are comparable to the Chinese national average (but not compared to the highest Chinese provincial averages which are astonishing).

I wish to point out a part of the culture of gendercide that gets little presstime. Although gender selected abortions is the primary mechanism of eliminating girls in these parts of the world, there is a disturbing practice of inflicting death by neglect in both countries. Here are statistics collected from the CIA World Factbook.

The US like much of the world has a typical disparity in infant mortality rates (number of deaths of one year old infants or younger per 1000). The male rate is higher:

male: 6.94 deaths/1,000 live births

female: 5.55 deaths/1,000 live births

Another country, Taiwan conforms to the typical global disparity of a higher male infant mortality rate:

male: 5.64 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 5.04 deaths/1,000 live births

But in China and India, the female infant mortality rates are higher:

China | male: 18.87 deaths/1,000 live births; female: 21.77 deaths/1,000 live births
India | male: 46.18 deaths/1,000 live births; female: 49.14 deaths/1,000 live births

The higher female infant mortality rates reveal that in China and a few Indian states, parents discriminate against daughters by depriving them of nutrition and health care so their demise will give room for sons.

The elimination of so many girls by neglect is the gravest human rights crisis in China and I'm extremely disappointed in the Western media for not giving it prominence. This is an issue in which greater attention and humiliation piled on China will be effective in spurring a solution rather than backlash and defiance. If the plight of infant girls is better known, the emerging leisure activist class in developed coastal China will demand the government protect girls in backwards China.

In India where there is much greater public discussion of the implications of the growing gender imbalance, I wish opinion leaders will devote attention to this ugly aspect of the problem.

If you know journalists covering this field or know anyone who knows someone, please bring up this undercovered issue and urge a write up.