Sex among middle school students may be contributing to growing sterility problems among young women in Guangzhou, the capital of south China’s Guangdong Province, says a prominent local doctor.

Puppy love is no longer a rare phenomenon in China. Youth now have easy access to incomplete information about sex and love before they have the ability to discern good from bad.

According to a recent survey, more than 20 percent of the couples in Guangzhou are now suffering from infertility, and the trend is on the rise.

Li Bing, a senior gynecologist at the Guangzhou No. 2 People’s Hospital, said sex among younger people is one of the culprits.

More than one-third of the cases of female infertility were connected with abortions.

Young women who have an abortion in their teens are usually hurt both physically and mentally, resulting in sterility when they grow up, Li said.

The youngest girl who has come to Li’s hospital for an abortion was just 13 years old, Li said.

Girls under the age of 18 now account for more than 7 percent of the total number of abortion patients in Guangzhou, Li said.

The long summer and winter holidays are usually the peak periods for abortions among students.

Meanwhile the number of young women contracting diseases like cervical cancer is growing steadily, Li added.

Adverse effects of sex can also be seen in young men.

The youngest man to date found to be suffering from impotence was only 19 years old. In previous years, most men diagnosed with similar symptoms were more than 30 years old.

Li believes excessive sex or masturbation at an early age may be behind the trend among local male adults, Li said.

About 30 percent of local men suffer from impotence or premature ejaculation problems.

Another survey, which was published in the Guangzhou Daily early this month, said that more than 54.2 percent of middle school students said they were not opposed to having sex. About 70 percent said they would like to start dating in middle school.

Some 3,000 local middle school students from 10 schools were interviewed for the survey.

Many of the students who had sex or dated at an early age come from the city’s key middle schools, whose students usually perform extraordinarily well on the annual national entrance examinations for universities and colleges.

An official from Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Education yesterday admitted dating and sex did exist on the school campuses.

“In some schools, more than 60 percent of the students from senior high schools have begun dating, which affects their normal studies,” said the official who refused to be named.

Curiosity and the great study pressure have been attributed to the growing number of students who have sex and date.

(China Daily April 20, 2004)