KILLING-US-SOFTLY1

has led to a gender imbalance and, as a result, nearly 30 million Chinese men will be
unable to find brides by 2020. Although such a large number of unmarried men could
cause social instability, it also means that a good percentage of China’s men have been
excluded from the procreation chain, even though unintentionally. China’s State
Population and Family Planning Commission reports that 118 boys are born for every
100 girls. In rural areas, where boys are preferred to girls because they can help with
farming and carry the family name, the sex imbalance is even greater, as 130 baby boys
are born for every 100 girls. To rectify this trend, the government introduced the “Care
for Girls” program in 2001 to promote the birth of girls in rural areas through financial
incentives of 100 Yuan (about $13) each month per girl. Also, local education fees are
waved for girls.
strict control of population movement
Since rural Chinese are allowed to have two children while urban Chinese are not, the
government exercises strict control of internal movements and prevents rural dwellers
from migrating to the cities. China’s ‘household registration system’ (hukou) acts like
an internal passport and allows rural Chinese to move to the cities only for temporary
work or post-secondary studies. The children of farm workers who have migrated to the
cities are not allowed to enroll in city schools and must attend school in their villages.
There are circa 130 million children in China who are separated from their parents
through the requirements of the hukou system which are in great part dictated by the
demographic objectives of the One-Child Policy.
2. INDIA’s Surgical Sterilization
260% population growth since 1960; TFR 2.6 (-57%); 250 million births prevented
India is the world’s largest democracy and unlike China it could not restrict family size by law.
Due to its poorly developed infrastructure and moral objections to mass poisoning, India could
also not adopt the West’s covert chemical control measures. Its method of choice, coerced
surgical sterilization, bypasses its infrastructure shortcomings and avoids the moral obstacle of
poisoning its people.
India has settled on coerced surgical sterilization of females after four decades of failed attempts
to give incentives to its male citizens to voluntarily undergo sterilization. In the 1950s and ‘60s,
monetary compensation or bonuses were offered to medical practitioners who performed
vasectomies on low-income men, as well as to those who motivated men to receive vasectomies,
and on the men who received them. The incentives were only available to low income men,
which betrays the policy’s eugenic aspect.
32