Authorities say the one-child policy has prevented over 300 million births since 1980

HONG KONG, March 9 (IslamOnline.net) – Women are expected to be something of a rarity in China by 2020 when there will be 40 million single men and no woman to marry due to mid-term abortions and the country’s one-child policy, a Chinese demographer warned Tuesday, March 9.

Li Weixiong, who advises the country's political consultative conference on population issues, said preference for boys was creating an artificial disparity between the number of boys and girls that represents “a serious threat to building a well-off society”, British daily The Guardian reported.

Using ultrasound testing to know the sex of their children, a large number of Chinese parents opt for aborting female fetuses in the hope that the next pregnancy will produce a son.

They believe that boys are more able than girls to provide for their families when they grow up.

The centuries-old practice is, however, rife in rural areas where people want males to cope with physical demands of farming.

Adding insult to injury, the communist country has been also adopting the one-child policy since 1979, which states that each couple should only have one child unless one or both of the couple are from an ethnic minority.

Authorities say it has prevented well over 300 million births since 1980.

According to the United Nations, China's population stood at 1.3 billion in 2003.

Experts fear that the male-favoring culture in the world’s most populous nation could trigger an unprecedented demographic crisis.

According to census statistics, the gender ratio has shifted considerably by 2000 at 100 girls born for every 117 boys.

The disparity is even bigger in rural areas, where the boy-to-girl imbalance is estimated to be as high as 130 to 100, the British daily said.

Social Ills

Li further warned of the social ills that will plague the country due to the expected shortage of women.

He said this would lead to a dramatic rise in prostitution and the trafficking of women.

“Such serious gender disproportion poses a major threat to the healthy, harmonious and sustainable growth of the nation's population and would trigger such crimes and social problems as abduction of women and prostitution,” he said.

His claims are supported by official figures showing that police freed more than 42,000 kidnapped women and children in 2001 and 2002, The Guardian said.

Elisabeth Croll, professor of Chinese anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, welcomed Li's warning.

“It is forecast that there will be a shortage of potential marriage mates which will lead to some social instability,” she said.

Islam views abortion as haram and a crime that kills a soul, putting males and females on an equal footing.

Christianity also prohibits abortion as a grave moral evil.