Customs crackdown
According to the ban on fetus sex tests and sex-selective abortions released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission in May 2016, any organizations or individuals involved in either of these practices would be punished.
"Enterprises that sell or rent equipment for B-ultrasound or chromosome detection to unqualified organizations or individuals will be asked to reform and fined 10,000 to 30,000 yuan," read the regulation.
However, sending blood samples to Hong Kong is not the only way to identify a fetus' sex.
The Beijing Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau seized three boxes of reagents apparently used for fetus sex tests which had been sent from the US in October 2016, according to a press release from the official website of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
The introduction of the reagent claimed that by putting the reagent into the urine of pregnant woman, it could help test the child's sex - green for a boy and orange for a girl.
Beijing customs destroyed the reagent in accordance with related regulations. And they asked e-commerce platforms to rectify and tell customers to abide by the laws, read the press release.
At least two pregnant women in Beijing reached by the Global Times confirmed that doctors in private hospitals would give a hint about the child's sex when asked by parents.
"Although China relaxed the one-child policy in October 2015,which could help decrease the ratio imbalance to some extent, many couples who have had a girl want to have a boy as their second child," Zhai Zhenwu, a sociologist at Renmin University of China, told the Global Times.
Serious imbalance
The fact that the fetus sex identification industry in Shenzhen and Hong Kong has grown bigger fits Zhai's remarks.
Xie Yongping, a team leader from the Yongjia Public Security Bureau, said "The service chain has developed in more than 20 provinces and municipalities, involving more than 50,000 pregnant women and 200 million yuan… More than 100 people are related to the cases … We call it [the chain of] 'the blood empire.'"
The explosion of "the blood empire" has led to a serious imbalance in child sex ratios with Li explaining that the ratio between boys and girls once hit 136 boys for every 100 girls. While the global average is 103 to 107 baby boys to 100 baby girls.
China's national sex ratio at birth has remained high since the late 1980s, and reached 117 boys to 100 girls in 2011. And illegal sex identification and abortions are the direct causes behind this phenomenon.
The country has launched a series of crackdowns on these tests and abortions and 6,700 such cases were busted in the three years before August 2011 and over 2,400 people were punished nationwide, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Zhai mentioned that the preference for male children is influenced by traditional Chinese culture and it is more common in rural areas.
According to a 2010 Social Development Blue Paper from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the sex ratio of those below 19 is the worst hit of all the different age groups. By 2020, the number of Chinese men of marriageable age will outnumber their female peers by 24 million.
Lu Jiehua, a professor at the Department of Sociology in Peking University said that "gender equality is a basic state policy. We should not only advocate it but push it through activities to give girls a more relaxed environment."
Only by providing fair opportunity to girls in all aspects, including education and employment, will people finally realize that it is the same to have a boy or a girl, Lu said.
