THERE were fewer marriages last year in China, the world's most populous country, where the one child policy has worsened a natural shortage of women.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs said that 9.34 million couples registered their marriages in 1996 while 1.13 million couples split up in the courts or official marriage registration agencies.
Analysis of the statistics showed the national marriage rate slipped 0.05 per thousand from 1995 to 7.7 per thousand, and the divorce rate climbed 0.1 per thousand to 1.9 per thousand across the nation, and to a record seven per thousand in the remote western region of Xinjiang.
The marriage rate fell across China, except in the Himalayan region of Tibet and on the southern tropical island province of Hainan, where these has been an influx of young economic migrants, a newspaper quoted sociologists as saying.
A western expert said the world ratio of male infants to females is 106 to 100, but that in China is running at 115 boys to 100 girls, and in some places the ratio is 140 or 150 to 100, something which could only happen through human interference.
The phenomenon has encouraged an increase in prostitution, because of the number of young males unable to find marriage partners, observers say.
In China the government has decreed that couples should only have one child, but because of a deepseated historic desire for male offspring, many couples seek prenatal information from ultra sound devices, leading to an increase in the abortion of female foetus. However, officially since 1994, a law has prohibited the use of sonar devices.
The abortion rate in some cities is high. In Shanghai where western observers consider the data to be very reliable, it is 2.5 abortions per one live birth. In order to discourage infanticide, the law in some rural areas permits a second child without sanctions if the first is a girl.
The law does not apply to minority ethnic groups where three children are allowed or Tibetans who can have as many children as they wish.
In urban and rural communities, each year quotas are drawn up of married women, by name, who want to try for a child. Those included in the quota may stop using contraceptives, the most common of which is the IUD. Those who conceive outside the quota are encouraged to have an abortion, and treated as socially irresponsible of they do not.
Many are fined for imposing an "extra burden" on society. Failure to conceive can mean a long wait for inclusion in a new quota.
China's population is expected to reach 1.28 billion by 2000.
Reuter adds:
In a move partly directed at China, the US House of Representatives voted on Thursday to reinstate a strict ban on US aid to international groups that directly or indirectly fund abortion services as part of family planning services they provide in developing countries. The measure passed on a vote of 232-189 as an amendment to a larger State Department's authorisation Bill which the House will continue debating next week.
The family planning aid restrictions would also deny all US funding for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) unless it can certify that no coercive abortions had taken place in China the previous year, or that it had ended all its activities in that country.
The primary sponsor, New Jersey Republican, Mr Chris Smith, argued the strict ban would permit US funds to go only to organisations that pledge to provide only family planning help and do not provide abortions.