Chained Chinese mother puts spotlight on the country’s staggering gender imbalance
- Images of a mother chained by the neck in a tiny room in Jiangsu province have stoked debate about human trafficking and the country’s rural gender imbalance
- Demographers say her plight offers a peek into the complexity of marriage in rural China, which is still grappling with effects of the country’s one-child policy
Shackled by her neck and locked up all day in a squalid shack, video footage of a mentally-ill woman imprisoned by her husband has cast a shadow over the festive mood created by Beijing’s Winter Olympics.
The woman, surnamed Yang, has become a source of concern and outrage in China after video emerged of her grim living conditions in a village in Feng county, Jiangsu province.
After repeated denials, local authorities finally acknowledged the possibility of human trafficking in Yang’s case on Thursday, while demographers say her plight offers a peek into the complexity of marriage in rural China, where traditional values such as a preference for sons and the decades-long one-child policy have resulted in a staggering gender imbalance.
The problem of tens of millions of bachelors caused by decades of one-child policy, is unsolvable
“The problem of tens of millions of bachelors caused by decades of one-child policy, is unsolvable,” said Yi Fuxian, a demographer and senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Since 1980, more than 30 million more males were born than females in China, according to estimates from academics.
Figures from China’s seventh national census last year showed there were 17.52 million more men than women in the population aged between 20-40.