Some 30 to 40 million men of marriageable age in China will be relegated to lives as bachelors by 2020 if the practice of CT gender screening in the embryo stage is not held in check, said Li Weixiong, vice chairman of the Population, Resources and Environment Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

"This is by no means a sensational prediction," said Li. "The great disparities between male and female newborns pose a serious threat to building a prosperous society."

"The imbalance between male and female has become more and more serious, especially in the rural areas," Li said in a keynote speech at a full meeting of the ongoing CPPCC annual session, which opened in Beijing last Wednesday.

Li quoted the figures of previous population censuses: the national newborn gender ratio was 100:108.5 in 1982, 100:111.3 in 1990 and 100:116.9 in 2000. However, the ratio reached as high as 100:130 in Hainan and Guangdong. Normally, gender ratios are 100:104 - 107.

"Such a serious gender imbalance poses a major threat to the healthy, harmonious and sustainable growth of the nation's population, and could trigger such crimes and social problems as mercenary marriage, abduction of women and prostitution," Li said.

The policy advisors attributed the grave situation to centuries-old feudalistic ideas, sophisticated medical testing and the lagging social security system in the countryside. Although China has a maternity and child care law and family planning law that forbid embryo gender screening, they have little effect, according to Li.

He urged the government to adopt a combination of legal, economic, educational and cultural measures to lower the birth proportion of male to female.

(Xinhua News Agency March 9, 2004)