WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

IMBALANCED SEX RATIO AT BIRTH AND FEMALE CHILD …
charge of education gave special privileges to girls in families with only
girls in their admittance to and tuition for high school (Shi, 2005).
During the last two years, “Care for girls” has been expanded and
has achieved at least temporary improvement. For instance, SRB in the
24 pilot counties dropped from 133.8 in 2000 to 121.8 in 2004, although
the SRB in China was still increasing. “Care for girls” promoted
the benefit-oriented mechanism for families with only girls, and
the outlay from different levels of governments and donations from
public have reached over 300 million yuan. During the comprehensive
program against illegal sex determination and illegal sex-selective abortion,
over 3,000 illegal cases were found and punished throughout the
country (Shi, 2005). The mainstream media and websites carried many
reports on “Care for girls” while the public’s recognition of the need to
protect women and promote children’s legal rights has obviously
advanced. At present, the “Care for girls” program is a key component
of the Chinese government’s long-term population development strategy.
Over one-third of the nation’s counties have instituted relevant
programs, extending the range and influence of the pilot work (CPN,
2005). However, there remain some problems in the project implementation.
For instance, the significance of “Care for girls” has not been
uniformly recognized, as some regions have not paid enough attention
to the imbalance of the SRB; the cooperation between regions and
administrative agencies should be enhanced; social and economic
policies for girls and families with girls should be improved and implemented.
5. Some prospects for the future
The Chinese government has made it a high priority to address the
problems of rising SRB, and implementation of the “Care for girls”
project is a further step in this direction (Shi, 2005). Decreasing SRB
and protecting girl children is an important part of population policy
with the general goal of restoring the SRB to a normal level before
2010.
As part of this goal, the government has promoted uxorilocal marriage
in some rural areas as a means of decreasing son preference (Yan
et al., 1999). With the demographic and economic transition in China,
this is a propitious time to enhance the activities of “New Culture of
Marriage and Childbearing Entering into Thousand Families”, “Care
for Girls”, and other kinds of interventions that aim to gradually decrease
son preference, and change the traditional culture of “value man
more than women” (Jin et al., 2004). However, changing the system
43