Beijing : China appears to be ignoring social issues in the country as birth rates are not increasing, women trafficking is spreading widely and gender disparity and discrimination against women have become deep-rooted in Beijing.
According to Policy Research Group, which cited the Chinese National Statistics Bureau, the birth rate registered a fall for the sixth year in a row last year. The controversial one-child policy, which contributed to the drop in net population increase, was scrapped six years ago. Yet the scenario has not changed.
Rising child care costs, ballooning school expenditure and an ageing population are pushing down new births, besides, of course, the changes that have come in the Chinese society under long years of Communist rule.
China’s population measures which began with the one-child policy in 1979 have always been “abusive and coercive” to the people.
This highlighted a ground reality that local party members and officials of China do not put people first, and have serious problems of formalism and bureaucratism.
Both Lou Hai, party chief of Fengxian, and Zheng Chunwei, head of the county government, said they had ‘no knowledge of the issue (trafficking, and buying women) previously’, the Xinhua News Agency quoted them as saying.
This came to light a couple of days after the Chinese central government issued its annual “No.1 Document” of the year with a focus on issues concerning “safeguarding stability in China’s vast villages, including cracking down on all violations of women’s and children’s personal rights,” Policy Research Group reported.
While China professes to put the interests of its population first, it actually continues to overlook the country’s most important asset: its people. No surprise, the Xi Jinping regime has failed to come to grips with rampant gender disparity and discrimination.
The latest human trafficking case from Xuzhou (in Fengxian county, Jiangsu Province, East China) is more than a wake-up call for the authorities and the couples interested in becoming parents.
The victim was allegedly trafficked in June 1998. And the man with whom she has been found living has chained and abused her every time she had a seizure.
Her plight, which has gone viral on social media, has put in focus the trafficking issue, according to the Global Times, which said, two persons have since been arrested on suspicion of abducting and trafficking women.
The case revealed problems and loopholes at the grassroots level in terms of protecting women’s and children’s rights and helping and caring for special groups.