Historical Underreporting and the Identification of the “Missing Girls”

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-90
Author(s):  
John James Kennedy ◽  
Yaojiang Shi
Keyword(s):  
Rural Families ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Population Census ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
Children And Young Adults ◽  
Birth Control Policy

There are three distinct time periods in which the social and political environments influenced incentives to hide or not hide infants, children, and young adults: the pre-PRC period before 1949, the Maoist era (1949–1976), and the reform era, after 1979. Rural families and local officials avoided census counts and registration for males and females from the late Qing Empire in the 1800s right up through modern times. After 1979 came the most critical outcome of the state birth control policy: the country’s abnormally high sex ratio at birth statistic. According to an assessment of the 2010 population census, the number of girls truly missing from the population between 1980 and 2010 was estimated to be about 20 million. However, an examination of the two key assumptions behind these skewed statistics shows the number of hidden girls to be closer to 10 million, or about half of the estimated number of “missing girls.”

Lost and Found

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John James Kennedy ◽  
Yaojiang Shi
Keyword(s):  
Birth Control ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Rural Families ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Sex Selective Abortion ◽  
Birth Control Policy ◽  
Rural Parents ◽  
Local Leaders

Between 1979 and 2010 local leaders and rural families across China concealed the existence of millions of girls from government officials and the national census. The single child policy (1979–2015) was introduced in 1979, and the central government’s goal was to reduce population growth through strict birth control. Yet, at the same time, many rural parents had strong incentives not to comply with the birth control policy because under economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, larger families meant increased labor and income. However, most journalists and scholars reported that the combination of a strictly enforced central policy and a historical preference for sons had led to a stark gender imbalance, with an abnormally higher number of males being born than females. The result was an estimated 20 million “missing girls” in the population from 1980 to 2010. Most demographers have believed that this dearth of girls has been due to widespread sex-selective abortion and infanticide. Yet quantitative analysis of China census data and qualitative interviews with rural parents and local leaders suggest that at least half of the “missing girls” were hidden in China. This was due to two key factors. First was the discretion to implement central policy that street-level bureaucrats and local leaders have. There was mutual noncompliance between rural families and village leaders, such that rural parents did not immediately register additional children and local leaders underreported illegal births to higher authorities. Second is the increasing value of daughters and equal preference for sons and daughters over the last several decades.

From Resisting to “Embracing?” the One-Child Rule: Understanding New Fertility Trends in a Central China Village

2007 ◽  
Vol 192 ◽  
pp. 855-875 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Birth Control ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Rural Families ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Central China ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Fertility Trends ◽  
The One ◽  
Birth Control Policy

AbstractFrom its initiation in 1979, China's one-child policy has been controversial. Most critiques on the stringent birth control policy in rural China still focus on the resistance framework and there is very little research on whether Chinese peasant families are changing their fertility preferences and behaviours when confronting both the state birth control policy and the rapidly changing social and economic environment. Based on recent ethnographic study in a central China village, this article seeks to explore new fertility trends that indicate the shift from “active resistance against” to “conscious decision for” the one-child limit among rural families. In particular, it discusses the newly emerging social, economic and demographic factors that may have played a role in this fertility shift, and its social implications for the central tenet of son preference in Chinese culture and the norm of child-rearing as a means of securing old age support among rural families.

The Institution of Petition and Authoritarian Social Control in Contemporary China

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (02) ◽  
pp. 1850005
Author(s):  
WOOYEAL PAIK
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Falun Gong ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
Fire Alarm ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
Critical Regions

This paper discusses the Xinfang institution of petitions (letters and visits) and explores the ways in which the Chinese Communist Party regime utilizes social control mechanisms to identify, oversee, and suppress socially discontented people with grievances in the post-Mao market reform era. This public-facing institution for managing participation and rightful resistance, which aims to oversee local officials and redress mass grievances, also plays an unexpected role in social control. Unlike the social control exercised by police patrols in police states, Xinfang functions first as a “fire alarm” in this authoritarian regime; then, if necessary, as a selective “police patrol,” collecting information on discontented people with grievances, monitoring them, quelling and even preempting their protests, and referring dangerous petitioners to higher levels of government to prevent disruption in politically critical regions. This argument is supported with a detailed institutional analysis of the nationwide structure of Xinfang and several case studies of Xinfang’s multi-layered response to petitioners to Beijing, during the Falun Gong incidents in 1999 and 2000 in particular. Several complementary case studies on the behavior of local petition mechanisms and statistical evidence are also analyzed.

Humanism in Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Schröder
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Secular Humanism ◽  
Group Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
Free Thought ◽  
Multiple Secularities ◽  
Secular Humanist

This chapter addresses secular humanism in Europe and the way it is “lived” by and within its major institutions and organizations. It examines how national and international secular humanist bodies founded after World War II took up, cultivated, and transformed free-religious, free-thought, ethical, atheist, and rationalist roots from nineteenth century Europe and adjusted them to changing social, cultural, and political environments. Giving examples from some selected national contexts, the development of a nonreligious Humanism in Europe exemplifies what Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt call “Multiple Secularities”: different local or national trajectories produced a variety of cultures of secularity and, thus, different understandings of secular humanism. Apart from this cultural historization, the chapter reconstructs two transnational, ideal types of secular humanism, the social practice type, and the secularist pressure group type. These types share similar worldviews and values, but have to be distinguished in terms of organizational forms, practices, and especially policy.

Fröschen und Gurken

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-70
Author(s):  
Julia Boog-Kaminski
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Young Adult Literature ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Sexual Liberation ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Children And Young Adults

Artikelbeginn:[English title and abstract below] Kaum eine Zeit steht so sehr für die sexuelle Befreiung und Sprengung familialer Strukturen wie die 1968er (vgl. Herzog 2005). Kaum ein Märchen steht in der psychoanalytischen Deutung so sehr für den sexuellen Reifungsprozess und das Unabhängigwerden eines Kindes wie Der Froschkönig. Der vorliegende Artikel greift diese Verbindung auf, da gerade während der 68er-Bewegung verschiedene Wasser- und Amphibienfiguren in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (KJL) vorkommen, die stark an die Motive des Märchens erinnern. Frogs and CucumbersTransformed Men in Children’s and Young Adult Literature Since 1968 In psychoanalysis, the fairy tale The Frog Prince has attracted much interest as a narrative of sexual liberation. Placing this motif at the heart of Nöstlinger’s and Pressler’s ›antiauthoritarian classics,‹ this article puts forward a new reading of literature for children and young adults. Through the ambiguity of the frog figure – oscillating between nature and culture, consciousness and unconsciousness – these books chronicle, in their own manner, the social transformation associated with 1968. They portray the emancipation movement as a hurtful and paradoxical process instead of one that reproduces the myth of linear progress.

A case of murder in eighteenth-century Mongolia

1969 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-90
Author(s):  
C. R. Bawden
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
General Outline ◽  
Official Document ◽  
The Social ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
The One

In general outline the pattern of government in Outer Mongolia during the Manchu dyasty in not unfamiliar and it is a well-known fact that there was no judiciary as such, the administration of justice being only one of the various duties of local officials at various levels. A certain amount of work has been done on problems of law and justice, but there remain many problems of detail to be both raised and commented upon. Two lines of inquiry are open. On the one hand it is instructive to see how the processes of investigation and trial worked—how an alleged offence came to offical notice, who investigated, how evidence was recorded, what instances a case passed through, and how, and on what legal basis, it was disposed of. Other closely related technical questions concern the form and language of official documents. On the other hand, examination of criminal cases will afford insight into the social status, living conditions, and perhaps the psychology, of the persons concerned. It is in fact largely through the medium of legal and other official documents that we shall glean whatever information there is to be had about the day to day lives of individual persons in Mongolia under the Manchus, since other sources of information—journalism, biography, fiction, letters, memoirs, and so on—are non-existent. Apart from reports of criminal cases, some of which have been dealt with in model fashion by Klaus Sagaster, much information can be found in other types of official document, such as complaints submitted by ordinary people against officials, but in the present article we shall be concerned exclusively with the report of one criminal case dating from the late eighteenth century.

scholarly journals ПЛАЋАЊЕ И НАГРАЂИВАЊЕ ДИПЛОМАТА ОБЛАСНИХ ГОСПОДАРА У БОСНИ PAYMENTS AND AWARDS OF DIPLOMATS OF LOCAL MAGNATES IN BOSNIA

2017 ◽  
pp. 209-235
Author(s):  
Аранђел Смиљанић
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Rural Families ◽  
The Other ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
The Social ◽  
Vertical Mobility

Апстракт: У средњовјековном друштву издијељеном на оне који владају и ратују, на оне који су потчињени и раде, и на оне који се моле, вертикалну покретљивост тешко је било остварити. Једна од оних дјелатности које су омогућавале скок на друштвеној љествици била је и дипломатија, посебно за оне који су потицали из нижих друштвених слојева. Истина, дио дипломата био је властеоског поријекла, док је други потицао из трговачких или сеоских породица, те се својим знањем и способностима уздигао до првих савјетника или сарадника обласних господара у Босни. Први су имали властите приходе са својих имања или од других послова којима су се бавили. За разлику од њих, они други су кроз бављење дипломатијом стицали највећи дио својих прихода. Кроз овај рад аутор покушава одговорити на питања да ли су ти приходи били редовни или повремени, колики су они били, какве су биле награде и дарови и колики су удио имали у укупним приходима дипломата. Највећи дио овог рада чини навођење појединих примјера из оновремених историјских извора о поклонима урученим дипломатима. Дио рада посвећен је награђивању дипломата за учињене услуге, као и обећањима да ће бити награђени ако обаве послове који иду у корист друге стране у преговорима. У посљедњем дијелу рада аутор саопштава сазнања о материјалном богатству појединих дипломата. Кључне речи: дипломати, обласни господари, Босна, Дубровник, Венеција, плаћање, дарови, награде, обећања, преговори, материјално богатство. Abstract: Vertical mobility was hard to achieve in the medieval society divided into those who ruled and participated in warfare, those who were subjugated and worked, and those who prayed. Diplomacy, particularly for those originating from lower social strata, was also one of activities that enabled a person to climb the social ladder. Truly, some diplomats were of noble origin, while some came from merchant or rural families, and with their knowledge and capabilities they rose to become the first advisers or associates of local magnates in Bosnia. The former had own income from their own estates or other activities they dealt with. In contrast to them, the latter obtained the major part of their income through diplomacy. In this paper, the author attempts to answer the questions as to whether such income was regular or occasional, to determine its amount and the types of awards and gifts, and ascertain its share in total earnings of diplomats. The major part of this paper consists of examples from the then historical sources about the gifts given to diplomats. A part of the paper examines the awards presented to diplomats for rendered services, and analyses the promises that they would be awarded if they performed activities benefiting the other negotiating party. In the final part of the paper, the author presents knowledge about the material wealth of some diplomats. Keywords: diplomats, local magnates, Bosnia, Dubrovnik, Venice, payments, gifts, awards, promises, negotiations, material wealth.

The only-child premium and moderation by social origin: Educational stratification in post-reform China

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-409
Author(s):  
Haowen Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Control Policy ◽  
Social Origin ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Only Child ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
The Family ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The One ◽  
Birth Control Policy ◽  
Critical Grade

The One Child Policy initiated in the late 1970s created a birth cohort with an unusually high proportion of only children. This paper examines the relationship between being the only child in the family and educational attainment, as well as its potential variations by social origin. Drawing my sample from the China Family Panel Studies, I compare two birth cohorts born before and after the birth-control policy. Results show that in the younger cohort, being the only child in the family produces a premium in educational outcomes, including years of completed schooling and odds of progressing through critical grade transitions. In addition, I observe a pattern that the only-child premium tends to be larger for people with higher social origins in competitive grade transitions.

Birth Control to Birth Promotion? China’s Population Policy at a Crossroads

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 60-73
Author(s):  
Min ZHANG
Keyword(s):  
Birth Control ◽  
Population Policy ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Question Mark ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
Private Rights ◽  
Birth Control Policy ◽  
Policy Incentives ◽  
Direct Measures

China officially ended its one-child policy effective from 1 January 2016. Yet the effects of the relaxation of birth control policy have been limited thus far. Largely relying upon policy incentives, China’s policymakers also face pressure to take more direct measures to boost fertility rate. Whether the Chinese government is able to balance the needs of the nation and the citizens’ private rights remains a big question mark.

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