Chinese State Theology: Caesaropapism Lives - in China

WEDNESDAY, 13 AUGUST 2014 Chinese State Theology BY MARCUS ROBERTS  | Why on Earth would an officially atheist country’s ruling class decide to create a new theology? Furthermore, why on Earth would anyone listen to what that ruling class had to say? The answers to those two questions: to buttress their authority and because their people have to listen to what they say on fear of severe penalties, may give you a hint as to which country we’re talking about. Yes China! The Communist Party controlling China has decided that spying on the menstrual cycles of its citizens is no longer enough, now it is going to pronounce on theodicy, the problem of consciousness and the whether it is holy because God wills it, or whether God wills it because it is holy. According to the International Business Times: “The [Chinese] government will create a “Chinese Christian Theology” to guide the practice of Christianity in the country, the China Daily reported Thursday. Although the government has yet to provide any details into what this new theology entails, its purpose is clear: Speaking to China Daily, Wang Zuo, director of the State Administration of Religious Affairs, said, ‘The construction of Chinese Christian Theology should adapt to China’s national condition and integrate with Chinese culture.’” I always thought that Christianity was universal and that the state should have little to say about Christian practice, but I suppose Caesaropapism has a long history. I think the importance of this attempt at a new theology is that the Chinese government is worried about an “unguided” Christianity, a religion that is claiming more and more Chinese adherents: “Since relaxing prohibitions on religious faith in 1982, the Chinese Communist Party now recognizes five official faiths: Protestantism, Catholicism, Taoism, Buddhism and Islam. Because much religious faith remains underground, it is difficult to establish the precise number of worshippers in China. But a 2007 survey estimated that 31 percent of the country’s population, a number exceeding 400 million people, practiced a religious faith of some kind. Each religion has an organized, government-sanctioned hierarchy that is headquartered in Beijing and under the direct supervision of the Chinese Communist Party.” There have been other attempts that the government has taken over the years to ensure that religious belief is according to the government’s rules: “In 2007, Beijing passed a law prohibiting Buddhists from reincarnation. (The government has thus far not revealed whether there have been any violations.) In Tibet, government minders have replaced monks as supervisors of Buddhist temples throughout the region, reversing a long-standing policy. In the far-western Xinjiang region, whose 9 million ethnic Uighurs practice a mild form of Sunni Islam, Beijing limits permission of Muslims to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, while in July China banned fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. And this month, in Karamay, the local government said residents wearing Islamic clothing, and men wearing long beards, could not legally board city buses.” It will be interesting to see what the Chinese government approved theology ends up looking like and to what extent it is followed by the various Christian denominations in China. Quite frankly I’m not surprised at the attempt to “de-fang” Christianity. The trouble for a totalitarian dictatorship is that the state is not able to tolerate a competitor for people’s affections and faith.  Especially a competitor that presumes to judge the actions of the state and its officials according to a universal moral precept that isn’t that espoused by Marx, Lenin and Mao.  The attempt to defang may be a bit late however: “Still, in a country where Web searches for Jesus far outnumber those for President Xi Jinping, Beijing may have a major challenge on its hands.” This article is published by Marcus Roberts and MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation. Commercial media must contact us for permission and fees. Some articles on this site are published under different terms.

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Cruel and Unnecessary

   5:14:48 PM

The One Child Policy Revisited

Marcus Roberts | 9 Feb 2014 | 

We’ve talked many times on this blog about the One Child Policy in China. We’ve discussed its horrendous human cost: the forced abortions; the dead babies and dead mothers; the forced sterilisations; and the drastic curtailment of the Chinese people’s liberty.  We’ve also discussed the social and economic effects - the lack of girls and women, the shrinking labour force and the ageing population.  We’ve also discussed the difficulty that China will have in reversing its low fertility rate anytime soon.  Against all of these horrendous costs, the apologists (and there have been a few in the commentators on this blog) of the policy have posited its one unquestioned boon – the curtailment of China’s runaway population explosion up to 1980.
Well, today I’m going to question that boon.  In the io9 website, I came across this article that downplays the effect that the one child policy had upon China’s birthrate.  As the author says:

“...a rising group of demographers and sociologists is disputing that [the one child policy slowed China’s population growth].  By taking a closer look at population figures before and after the policy took effect, and by doing a more careful statistical analysis, researchers have found that China’s population growth rate would have decreased in any case, and the policy was not just cruel, but unnecessary.”

Cai Yong, a sociology professor at University of North Carolina has tried to reconstruct what would have happened in China had the policy not been introduced in 1980 (a hard thing to do as a counterfactual cannot be proven).  However, by studying the fertility rates of 16 comparable countries, Cai and his co-authors found that the projections of China’s future birth rate made when the policy was put in place was unrealistic. The Chinese government predicted that China’s birth rate would slow at a much slower rate than we can see the 16 comparable countries actually achieved.
Cai noted that Chinese Amercians have a fertility rate og 1.5 children per woman, similar to China’s in 2010. Japan has been around 1.3 children per woman for the last 30 years while Taiwan’s fertility rate is about 1 child per woman. Women in these countries have of course no one child policy to coerce fewer births.

“Cai and his colleagues also did a Bayesian analysis of China’s birth rate from 1970 to 1980 and tried to project what the trend would have been from 1980 onwards, if nothing else had changed. And they found a decline similar to the one observed in other countries.  So it seems likely that China could have reached a level of 1.5 children per women [sic] by 2010 regardless – but the decline might have been less steep.”

In the decade prior to the one child policy being introduced in 1980 China’s fertility rate had halved from 5.8 to 2.8 children per women.  This was in part due to governmental programmes that encouraged fewer children, but were less brutal than the one child policy.  The government made birth control easier to access, gave study sessions and meetings and the terrible economic conditions at the time also encouraged fewer children.  However, there were forced abortions stories making their way into the western press by as early as 1973.  So prior to 1980, the policy may have been less brutal, but was still pretty terrible!
Interestingly in 1974 the Chinese denounced western calls for birth control at the UN as part of an imperialist agenda. However, after experimenting with other policies over the next few years, the Chinese government had decided by 1980 that birth control and abortions were actually the way to go.  Despite the policy’s numerous loopholes, by 2005 this had resulted in 63 percent of Chinese couples being restricted to one child only.
Furthermore, the researchers have found that attitudinal changes have come about through the three decades of the policy.  Cai published another paper in which he surveyed 30,000 women in Jiangsu Province. A third of these women were eligible to have a second child but only a third of these eligible women would consider having another child.  Further, when Cai returned to the province, only four percent of those eligible women had actually had a second child.  Mara Hvistendahl, author of “Unnatural Selection: Choosing boys over girls, and the consequences of a world full of men” says that:

“Perhaps the largest success of the policy, if you can call it that, is that it really turned China into a one-child [country].  Many people just don’t want more than one child now.”

As Cai notes, it’s much easier to reduce the fertility rate than it is to increase it.  So the growth rate of China’s population will continue to shrink and Cai expects China’s population to sink in the future.  Its labour force is shrinking and China will lose its competitive edge in that field. Men will find it harder to find wives. The population will get older and greyer. In fact, there’s plenty to suggest that we should talk about the one child policy in the same category as the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.  That is, it’s another tragic disaster that we can lay at the feet of an overweening despotic state. Let us hope, once again, that this disaster will be brought to an end soon.

This article is published by Marcus Roberts and MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation. Commercial media must contact MercatorNet for permission and fees. Some articles on this site are published under different terms.

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It’s a girl: The three deadliest words in the world

Evan Grae Davis | Tuesday, 30 July 2013

An estimated 200 million girls are missing. How can the world community stand by and allow gendercide to continue? asks the maker of a documentary film on this scandal.

t's a Girl Documentary Film - Official Trai

The United Nations estimates that as many as 200 million girls are missing today, the majority from India and China. What are the cultural patterns and individual stories behind this shocking statistic? Evan Grae Davis, an American who has extensive experience in the developing world, has produced a documentary film that answers this question through the mouths of women immersed in these cultures and activists who are campaigning for them. In this email interview with MercatorNet he explained how he came to make the film and what needs to happen next.

*****

MercatorNet: This is a very harrowing film. How did you come to make it?

Evan Grae Davis: I have spent the last nearly two decades travelling the world capturing stories of human need for humanitarian aid and development NGO's and non-profits. Throughout this time I witnessed a lot of injustice. I began asking the question, what are the cultural roots and mindsets that allow for human rights violations on the scale seen throughout the world today? I set out to explore this question through a documentary film. I and the team travelled to nine nations capturing stories for this film. One of the nations we visited was India, hoping to understand how the subjugation and devaluation of women could be justified by the deeply established son-preference culture. 

What we discovered while filming in India about the epidemic of missing girls and dramatically skewed sex ratios and related abuse and neglect of girls was a game-changer for us. After hearing the UN statistic of as many as 200 million girls missing in the world today as a result of 'gendercide' we researched the issue in China, as well, and were completely astonished by how few people seemed to be aware of what appeared to be the greatest human rights issue of our time, and certainly the greatest form of violence against women in the world today. There seemed to be very little out there on the topic. It was then that we determined to dedicate the film project to exposing this untold story and educating and mobilizing a movement to end gendercide in India and China.

What practices contributing to gendercide did you look into?

In the film, we explore the fundamental son-preference mindset that underlies gendercide. In cultures like India and China, the preference for sons is driven by centuries-old traditions that say that boys are more valuable than girls. Only sons carry on the family name and inherit wealth or perform the last rites for parents upon their death. Daughters join their husband's family once married and are no longer considered a part of their family of origin.

In India, the preference for sons is further influenced by the dowry system, where families often must pay large sums of money or give gold, land and other family assets to the husband’s family when their daughters marry. The cost of securing husbands for daughters becomes prohibitive, so families avoid having more than one or, at most, two daughters.

In China, the One Child Policy has contributed to the elimination of millions of girls over the past few decades. Sons care for their parents in old age, and daughters leave their family to join their husband's family, as in India. So if a family is only allowed one child, they are determined to identify the sex of each pregnancy and systematically terminate female fetuses until they bear a son.

Perhaps the most shocking testimony in your film comes from an Indian woman who killed eight daughters – and seems matter-of-fact about it. You interviewed this woman personally – did you understand, in the end, how she could do that? What light does her case throw on the whole problem in India?

Finding myself standing at the edge of a field in Southern India, listening to a mother share how she had personally strangled eight of her own newborn daughters in her quest for a son, was by far the most shocking and difficult interview. She shared so matter-of-factly, often smiling or laughing, as she talked about how she couldn't afford to raise daughters and made statements like, "Women have the power to give life and the power to take it away."

Later in the interview, she shared a song about her plight as a woman and the pain of being given in an arranged marriage at a young age. She told us how when she was 15, she was excelling in school and had high hopes for her future, when it was decided that she was to be given as a second wife to her sister's husband because her sister was unable to have children. Her purpose in life was to bear her husband a son.

This was when gendercide took on a whole new meaning for me, because I realized she was simply a product of the culture in which she lives. She was programmed from birth to accept certain traditional views about her value and roles as a woman. These deeply engrained cultural beliefs drive the entire system, and women often find themselves as the perpetrators, visiting the same violence they experienced upon their daughters and daughters-in-law.

Was it difficult to get testimonies from women at the grassroots who confront this problem directly? Who helped you reach them?

As American filmmakers, we couldn’t just show up and ask women to talk about the devaluation of women and killing of girls. So we connected with local, grassroots NGO's and advocates who had established relationships in their communities. They introduced us to women who were willing to share their stories with us. For instance, the Jesus Mercy Home Association took us to a few communities in Tamil Nadu, including the one where the mother who strangled eight daughters lived. And the team at the Centre for Social Research in Delhi took us to visit several of their community outreach programmes in Delhi and Haryana. Women's Rights in China helped is with some of the Chinese stories, along with other organizations there. The film would absolutely not have been possible without the work and support of these grassroots organizations and we are immensely grateful for their years of work in the field that enabled such open communication.

All of these field partners were careful about the privacy and safety of the women they work with, and we had to inquire in each case as to whether they were willing to share their stories or not. To our surprise, in India, many of the women and families were open to sharing their stories without shame or embarrassment. This seemed to indicate to us how deeply engrained some of these cultural beliefs were.

The one-child policy in China makes the situation somewhat different there, but do women buy into it to the same extent? Did you find that people accepted the policy, or not?

The impression I have received from talking to activists and those who are working to end gendercide in China is that the coercive and oppressive nature of the One Child Policy makes it extremely unpopular among Chinese women. However, they have very little choice but to silently endure the government's intrusion into their private lives and have little recourse against the Family Planning officials' dominance of their reproductive rights. Those who voice dissension or refuse to submit to the policy suffer harsh punishment, along with their family members.

India is a democratic and religious country, whereas China, officially, is not. Does India therefore have a better chance of breaking with this horrendous war on girls?

Religion in India impacts gendercide only in as much as some religious communities like Muslims and Christians do not practice female feticide and infanticide on the same level as Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs. However, the deeply engrained patriarchal son preference culture permeates India and the devaluation of women remains widespread regardless of religious persuasion.

One would think the democratic nature of India's government would lead to progress in women's empowerment. But despite a significant number of women in upper level government positions as well as one third of local government seats being filled by women, violence against women in India is worse than ever.

Government, whether in India or China, will only be a part of the solution if they have the political will to do so, and this is not the case in either nation at this time. When the Chinese government developed the political will to end foot-binding in China, the practice was effectively eliminated within a generation.

Both nations need government action, but in different ways.  China must end its coercive family planning policy, whereas India’s government must be pressured to enforce its existing laws against dowry, sex selection and infanticide.

You have expressed the hope that your film will help inspire a world movement to end gendercide. What specific goals does this movement need to address?

The first goal of the movement is to raise the level of awareness about gendercide throughout the world. We encourage anyone who desires to see value and dignity restored to girls in India and China to spread the word about the issue and our film with your friends and family, through Facebook and Twitter, and by bringing the film to your community through hosting a screening. You may learn more about how to spread the word or host a screening on our website at www.itsagirlmovie.com. 

As more people learn about the issue, our hope is to mobilize them to action. There are many ways to get involved, whether by signing our petitions asking world leaders demand an end to gendercide in India and China, or supporting our partners who are working on the ground to save girls and advocate for women's rights in India and China. Again, those interested can find out more on our action page on the website.

To date we have mobilized nearly half a million people to take action. Imagine if we had tens of millions demanding the governments of India and China provide justice and equality to girls and women suffering gendercide, and demanding world leaders require accountability for this massive human rights violation.

In a BBC programme on this issue an Indian speaker pointed out that the West is deeply implicated in gendercide because of its promotion of population control in India and China – and elsewhere – and acceptance of abortion as a method of birth control. Isn’t this a major obstacle to any positive role Western political pressure might play?

It is true that the gender imbalance in India, China and other nations in Asia was fuelled by pressure from Western governments and NGOs for population control, which in many cases exploited existing cultural preference for sons for the “greater good” of population control. Learn more about this in Mara Hvistendahl’s excellent book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men.

And although the sex ratios in Western nations are not as extreme as in India or China, gendercide does take place in all countries in the West to a varying degree. In particular, some studies have shown that Asian immigrant communities in the West have similar sex ratios to that of their home nations, indicating that gendercide (and in particular, sex selection) may be happening at a similar rate among immigrant communities. Canada, New Zealand, Australia and most countries in Western Europe prohibit abortion on the basis of a fetus’ gender -- the one notable exception being the United States.

These are all relevant questions that, I am sure, do impact on the positive roles the West can have in bringing pressure to bear towards the goal of ending gendercide.

Evan Grae Davis spent the last nearly two decades traveling the world capturing stories of human need for humanitarian aid and development NGO's and non-profits. He is the director of the film, It’s a girl. For more information visit www.itsagirlmovie.com

This article was first published by Evan Grae Davis and MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation. Commercial media must contact us for permission and fees. Some articles on this site are published under different terms.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/its_a_girl_the_three_deadliest_words_in_the_world#sthash.KWPYHBCC.dpuf

It's a Girl - The Vast Scale of Gendercide

Swift's Modest Proposal in 2012 - Chinese Babies in Capsules

In 1729, the great satirist Jonathan Swift published a savagely ironic "Modest Proposal" - 
"A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick." The tract is proposes to "find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method" for converting the starving children of Ireland into "sound and useful members of the Commonwealth."  Now a new method has been found for profiting from China's notorious one-child policy by grinding up the flesh of dead babies in fetal or infant stage into capsules for sale in South Korea.


The South Korean authorities are cracking down on this trade...because it is a health risk for South Koreans!  Turns out the dead Chinese babies in capsule form are not, after all, Beneficial to the Publick.

Baby Flesh - now available in capsule form!

Marcus Roberts | 8 May, 2012

Good evening all, the weather here in Nu Zeld has turned – it is raining and windy and generally miserable outside.  So it is a perfect backdrop to the horror and revulsion that I felt when I read this article from the BBC.  The facts as reported need no embellishment:

“South Korea says it will increase customs inspections targeting capsules containing powdered human flesh.

The Korea Customs Service said it had found almost 17,500 of the capsules being smuggled into the country from China since August 2011.

The powdered flesh, which officials said came from dead babies and foetuses, is reportedly thought by some to cure disease and boost stamina.”

So, some people are eating the flesh of dead babies and foetuses to boost their stamina? Isn’t this the very apotheosis of treating human beings as a product that are valuable as long as they can be useful and not something intrinsically worthwhile? Why is this story not leading news agencies everywhere as a vast and horrendous practise that should be rooted out and destroyed by a world that calls itself civilised? This is simply and literally diabolical. What instantly springs to mind is how many of these powdered dead babies were aborted under the one child policy and how many were aborted against their mother’s wishes?

One can imagine some officials making a tidy packet on the side in the trafficking of baby flesh. “You will burden China down, dear baby. Therefore we must abort you. But do not fear, because even your death can be useful. We will turn your flesh into powder and sell you to people who wish to be cured of disease.”

What is perhaps even more disturbing is the reason given by the Koreans why they are cracking down on these capsules:

“…officials said the capsules were full of bacteria and a health risk.

‘It was confirmed those capsules contain materials harmful to the human body, such as super bacteria. We need to take tougher measures to protect public health,’ a customs official was quoted as saying by the Korea Times.”

But if these capsules were shown to be safe, we’d be fine with it? Is that what the officials are saying? I hate to break it to these officials and anyone who agrees with them, but even if these were beneficial to your body, they would be decidedly harmful to your soul.

But perhaps I am being too quick to judge and to scold. After all, what is the difference between eating baby flesh to cure disease and relying on stem cell research to do the same thing? Aren’t we in both cases merely reducing the unborn to something that we value only if and when it suits us to use them?

PS: Make sure you check this great blogpost from Sheila Liaugminas at Sheila Reports about Chen Guangcheng and the Obama administration. (Sheila even mentions our favourite Chicken Little impersonator – Paul Erlich!)

Posted at MercatorNet.

Barefoot and blind: the power of one

Michael Cook | Wednesday, 2 May 2012 

A disabled campaigner against China's one-child policy has outwitted the world's most powerful governments.

A blind Chinese peasant has given the whole world a lesson in the power of one. Chen Guangcheng became one of China’s best-known civil rights activists after defending women in his province who had forced abortions under the one-child policy.

Now, after a dramatic escape from house arrest, he appears to have taken refuge in the US embassy in Beijing. His flight is perfectly timed to coincide with weighty discussions between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and their Chinese counterparts.

No doubt “barefoot lawyer” Chen realises that he has put both governments in a cleft stick. He has exposed one of China’s most hideous human rights abuses and he has challenged the Obama administration to truly make human rights – in the President’s words -- "a core national security interest and core moral responsibility."

Chen may be blind; he may be poorly educated; he may be a peasant – but he has outsmarted the world’s two most powerful governments. Neither of them wanted the one-child policy exposed to the glare of the world media. But now it is being discussed around the globe.

Forty-year-old Chen is a man of remarkable courage and intelligence. Blind almost from birth, he was raised on classic tales of courageous heroes fighting corrupt officials. He came from a poor family and only began school when he was 17.

In 1996 he began to lobby for rights for the disabled in Shandong Province, about 500 kilometres south of Beijing. He was so successful as a “barefoot lawyer” that local people took their grievances to him. He gained a national reputation by leading protests against illegal taxes, polluters, and discrimination against the disabled.

Local officials had already started harassing him when he launched a protest against illegal implementation of the one-child policy. He documented abuses and worked with victims and lawyers to organise a class-action suit against family planning officials in 2005. This failed, but his reputation grew.

Then local officials revenged themselves. They charged him with "wilfully damaging public property and organising a mob to disturb traffic". In 2006 he was sentenced to jail for four years.
In 2010 Chen was released but, together with his wife and son, he remained under illegal and sometimes brutal house arrest. Making his guards look like a bunch of Keystone Cops, Chen escaped on the night of April 22. Supporters drove him to Beijing.

From his hiding place Chen has released a YouTube appeal to Premier Wen Jiabao asking that officials who attacked his family be prosecuted and that the government prosecute corruption cases according to the law. Appealing to the law may seem quixotic, but if the draconian family planning laws had just been obeyed to the letter, women would have been spared some of the horror of forced abortions and sterilizations.

Horror is not too strong a word. Activist Annie Jing Zhang, of Women’s Rights in China, told a US Congressional hearing in 2009 that some towns display slogans like “Pregnancy with permit”, “When you are required by policy to get abortion, but if you don't, your house will be destroyed, your buffalo will be confiscated”, “Abort it, kill it, terminate it.  You just cannot give birth to it” or “We would rather to have blood flow like a river than to allow one extra baby to be born”.
Chen ends his YouTube appeal by saying:

“Premier Wen, many people don’t understand these illegal actions. Is it the local Party officials who are disobeying the laws, or do they have the support of the central government? I think that in the near future, you must give the public a clear answer. If we have a thorough investigation and tell the truth to the public, the results will be self-evident. If you continue to ignore this, what will the public think?”

Chen’s audacious ploy discomfits the US as well. Although President Obama recently set up an Atrocities Prevention Board, his administration has been reluctant to question the notorious one-child policy of its biggest trading partner. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters in 2009 that human rights shouldn’t interfere with practical concerns:

"Successive administrations and Chinese governments have been poised back and forth on these issues, and we have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis."

And Vice-President Joe Biden gave a speech at Sichuan University last year in which he spoke so diplomatically about the one-child policy that he seemed to be endorsing it: “Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I’m not second-guessing -- of one child per family”.

Now it’s time for the Obama Administration to show some courage of its own in standing up for Chen and his family. Essentially his demands are modest. All he wants is the protection of Chinese law. Even his activism against the one-child policy has been focused on getting officials to observe the informed consent enshrined in the law, not to overturn it.

Besides, it is possible that reformers in the upper echelons of the Communist Party like Wen Jiabao actually welcome Chen’s move. The hardline chief of security, Zhou Yongkang, who orchestrated the persecution of Chen, has already been rattled by the purging of party princeling Bo Xilai. Sympathy for Chen weakens his own position.

In any case, it is becoming increasingly clear that the one-child has been a disaster for China, as The Economist recently pointed out. China’s burden of elderly is growing, and the proportion of younger tax-payers is shrinking. Already there are labour shortages. Notwithstanding its current strength, China is a country which will grow old before it grows rich. Chen is a reminder not only of his government’s brutality but its folly in defying the laws of economic growth.

Chen Guangcheng’s fate now depends upon negotiations between two governments who both wish that he would step under a truck. But there is a way to support him. Nominate him for the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Population Award “outstanding contributions to increasing the awareness of population questions”.

In the past the prize has been given to odious family planning apparatchiks and to dictators like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Indonesian President Suharto. Its inaugural recipients, in 1983, were Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, after her notorious campaign for forced sterilization in the 1970s, and Qian Xinzhong, an architect of China’s one-child policy.

An avalanche of nominations for Chen Guangcheng would show that the world has finally repudiated one of the most despicable, senseless violations of human rights ever implemented by a government against its own people. Click on this link to download an official nomination form.


Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet, where this article was posted.

Chen Guangcheng and the Real War on Women and Girls - in China

Experts are calling Chen's escape to the US Embassy in Beijing the biggest US/China story since 1989. Spread the word and help Chen find freedom!

Chen Guangcheng's Escape: What China Is Trying to Hide From You

www.huffingtonpost.com

With the eyes of the world watching, China must allow Chen and his family to live in freedom. Critically, the nation must also heed widespread calls to repeal the One-Child Policy, whose victims are largely voiceless.

Time for Obama and Dems to Focus on the Real "War on Women" -- in China

www.huffingtonpost.com

Chen needs to be protected no matter what by U.S. officials, and the war on women in China (and in other nations around the globe) is the only real conflict against womanhood that should be distracting Americans in this election year.

Song for a baby girl in China

Must-watch video: If kids are so damn expensive why does our China need a one-child policy?

Michael Cook | 15 Dec 2011 |

Singer Chuanzi (real name 姜亚川 Jiang Yachuan) was a troubled teen who ended up in jail. But after being released, he forged a new career as an entertainer. When he appeared on China’s Got Talent with his singing dog “Dudu” he became an instant hit. “Zheng Qianhua” is one of his best known songs. It's about a new father who names his daughter “Zheng Qianhua,” which literally means, “to earn the money to spend.”

“I have a friend surnamed Zheng who was very happy at the birth of his daughter. He wanted me to help him write a song for her. So I asked him what her name was, he said Zheng Qianhua. I was so surprised I didn’t believe it, but he swore it was true. And he wanted me to write his daughter into a song. My friend has guts, and I promised him I would, so I wrote ‘Zheng Qianhua.’”

It's a simple song, but its economic analysis is faultless. In other countries birthrates have sunk far below China's -- without the repressive, inhumane, unspeakably cruel, one-child policy.

Retrieved December 16, 2011 from http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/10077

Intrinsically Evil

Gendercide Recognition
Marcus Roberts | 15 Jun 2011 |

At the beginning of this month, Members of the US Congress, demographers and representatives from human rights organizations got together in Washington DC to “launch an effort to end the gendercide of girls”. The humanitarian organization All Girls Allowed (its website is http://www.allgirlsallowed.org/) hosted a film showing and press conference, demographers presented research to Member of Congress showing the link between war and a “male youth bulge” (something we've covered on this blog here), while the economic, trade and currency valuation implications of such a gender imbalance in India and China were discussed.

The point of all of this was to “proclaim one truth that everyone agrees on: Gendercide – the systemic elimination of a particular gender – is wrong.”

I would hope that everyone agrees with that statement, especially when one remembers the worrying facts about China’s and India’s gender imbalances. In China the at-birth gender ratio of boys to girls has increased from 106:100 in 1979 to 120:100 today, largely as a result of the one-child policy. There are now 37 million more men than women in China according to government figures. In India the problem is just as serious as cultural preferences for boys see both the abortion of female fetuses and the neglect and killing of baby girls that were lucky enough to survive the womb.

However, this is not just a problem in the world’s two most populous nations. According to the book Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, by Beijing-based journalist Mara Hvistendahl, this is a problem that extends throughout South and Central Asia and into the Caucuses. Indeed, according to Hvistendahl, by now Asia as a whole is “missing” 163 million females – an immense number.

I would have thought that these numbers, these statistics and the mere fact that parents are killing their children on the basis of that child's sex (due to cultural, financial or governmental pressure) would be horrific enough to not need any further arguments to justify speaking out against it. That is why I thought it was a little sad that Chai Ling, the founder of All Girls Allowed felt that she had to include the following argument to bolster her case:
"It's important for world leaders to see gendercide is not just a women's rights issue, but it also leads to trade imbalance, insecurity and a threat to peace" .

I am sure that that is all true, but shouldn't the argument simply be: gendercide is wrong because female babies (born and unborn) are either being killed or left to die! Full stop. Quod erat demonstrandum. Surely world leaders should not then ask: "Yes, but what are the likely outcomes of this?"

Some things are wrong not because of their consequences, but because they intrinsically are wrong. Gendercide is one of those things. Thus, gendercide will be wrong even if you think its consequences are good, perhaps because it is furthering China's one child policy and helping to curb China's (and the world's) population. If world leaders cannot see that, and will only agree that it is wrong because its consequences are undesirable, then that is a very worrying state of affairs indeed.

Retrieved June 15, 2011 from http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/9266/

Bob Dylan in China