BEIJING (Reuters) - China, where 119 boys are born for every 100 girls and 40 million men may live as frustrated bachelors by 2020, has yet to curb its worsening gender imbalance despite much effort, state media said on Tuesday.
Chinese parents’ traditional preference for sons -- seen as carrying the family name and able to provide for them in old age -- was bolstered after the one-child policy was introduced in the 1980s, with many parents choosing to abort baby girls.
"Despite years of special campaigns, the sex ratio has not been checked effectively," Zhang Weiqing, the country’s top population official, was quoted by the China Youth Daily as telling a conference.
Beijing has vowed to reverse the trend by 2010, outlawing sex-selective abortions, launching a tentative scheme to pay moderate pensions to rural parents with no sons and stepping up propaganda that "girls are as good as boys".
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In the early 1980s, about 108 boys were born in China for every 100 girls, close to a current global demographic norm of 103 to 107 boys per 100 girls.
But China’s current ratio of boys to girls has risen since. In the southern provinces of Hainan and Guangdong, it has increased to more than 130 boys per 100 girls.
About 90 million Chinese couples have abided by the one-child policy in the past two decades, the China Youth Daily said, creating possibly the world’s largest population of only children.
That in turn has put a $300 billion (173 billion pound) strain on China’s pension system as the number of retired workers is growing faster than the ranks of those paying into pension funds.
The China News Service said Zhang, minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, also warned against a rebound in the birth rate and said the current birth control policy should be upheld. The one-child policy is still in place.
"The population will peak at about 1.5 billion around 2033 and it will further strain the tension between population, resources and the environment," Zhang said.
China now has 1.3 billion people, making it the world’s most populous nation.
