全民最大黨 朝蘚新聞

a previous episode.

more to be seen here, or here. and "sorry sorry" - episode.

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The authentic Lee Chun Ji

korean war maps

see also here (swf download link)

Harmonic Series 和谐语录

(ZT) 2010年网友和谐语录大全

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2、听来的段子。说一哥们儿隔壁新搬来个老外，一天晚上老外敲门求助，说：“我的电视坏了， 不能换台。”这哥们儿低头看了眼表，很镇定的说：“全国的电视在晚上七点到七点半都会发作这种病毒的。

....

4、当中国把停止征收 农业税视为对农业的一大恩惠时，却忽略了：世界上所有发达国家和世界上绝大多数国家，一直在对农业实行高补贴或补贴的政策。——时寒冰

...…


9、这就是真实的日本人！他们做事细致入微，以最大努力还原历 史，作为教训留给自己的民族。他们要让名单上的每一个人复活，成为实实在在的历史证据！但是，当时，为了顾及中日友好，中国阻止他们那样做。幸存的劳工， 像被驱赶的狗一样，偷偷地屈辱地重新聚在一起，抱头痛哭，仿佛在做见不得人的事情。而被抓到日本的劳工，而花冈惨案的每一个人，都是鲜活的，都是有名有姓 的。日本人相信的是事实。中国人最爱说铁证如山，而实际上是最不重视证据的——在南京，为了搞房地产，顶着全国人民的抨击，把一所保存完整的慰安所遗址拆 掉。----时寒冰

10、有消息说日本人有地沟油回收，经过处理后作为汽车燃料推向市场，中国人也有地沟油回收，经过处理后作 为食用油推向市场，百年之后，中国人幸运的全面进化为汽车人

......

12、据说五毛跟五毛的婚姻是最牢固的，因为他们能凑一块。

13、把鹤 杀光，能给鸡们一种长高的错觉。把树木锯光，能给草儿一种坚挺的错觉。把好人干光，能给普通人一种善良的错觉。

......

18、过去官府对于状师之流 往往嗤之以刁民之名，今日则有诽谤政府与寻衅滋事者。

19、北京电力公司数据显示，关灯前一分钟与8时35分相比，全市供电负 荷降低1万千瓦，占全市用电量的千分之几。电力公司工作人员介绍，电力不能储存，用户临时性关灯，不会减少生产成本，只会造成电力的浪费。
via 法制日报

...

21、在英国，你说不拆，任何人不敢拆你的。在中国，你说不拆，肯定把你拆 了。我就这一句话，这就是我们为什么在全世界牛逼！——天津宁河县教育书记刘广宝

22、大家好，和谐号列车提醒大家：乘客谷歌 因不遵守列车规定已被驱逐下车，请车上乘客务必遵守规定，拉紧窗帘，不得观看窗外风景。列车即将调头行驶，下一站：平壤.

....

25、 话说沙尘暴吹到台湾。许多老人走上街头，张开双手，45度仰望天空，泪流满面，深呼吸，激动地说道：60年了，60年了，终于闻到家乡的泥土味了。

....

27、“我知道美国有200万失业 人口，这让政府十分焦急，但中国失业人口有2亿，中国绝不盲目追求贸易顺差。”感谢总理，我终于知道我国的失业率大概是怎样一个数字了。

28、： 被放逐的诗人:一九八三年薄一波和杨秉城感慨地说，文化大革命中拣了条命，连我儿子小熙来也给我一顿铁拳，把我打得眼前一黑摔倒在地上，这个狠小子，又照 前胸踏了我几脚，当时就有三根肋骨被踹断，看他这个六亲不认，手毒心狠连他爹都往死里整的样子，这小子真正是我们党未来的接班人的好材料

29、 展播：用疫苗灭掉10后，用奶粉灭掉00后，用考试灭掉90后，用房价灭掉80后，用失业灭掉70后，用城管灭掉60后，用下岗灭掉50后，用拆迁灭掉 40后，用医改灭掉30后，……最后，活着且活得很好的人都去开两会

30、CCTV1，小崔说事，一个卫生部副部长，说免费为一农村大 妈做白内障手术，说：“摘下纱布，她看见了，确实得感谢共产党感谢政府。靠她自己，她一辈子也做不起手术。”问题是：辛苦一辈子，连个白内障手术都做不 起，得恨谁？

31、今年诺贝尔和平奖提名有六位中国人，他们的共同点是：他们的名字都是敏感词。

32、纽约时报：韩 寒小时候，他爸爸细心布置书房，让儿子触手可及的图书多是1949年前出版的，而1949年后出版的图书则让8岁的孩子够不着。

33、 某网友：“亚洲约20%人口无社保。中国13亿人，农村人口8-9亿，80%没社保，城镇4-5亿10%没社保；中国为亚洲无社保人口贡献了95%；扣除 中国人口，亚洲不到3%的人没社保！”（via 丁小云）

...…


36、 中央政法委今年维稳重点除了传统的“疆独、藏独、台独、轮子及民运”这“五毒”、民族分裂、宗教极端和恐怖主义「三股势力」外，还加入了“维权军人组织、 地下工会和农民上访团体”这“工农兵内三股势力”。

37、普天之下莫非共土，率土之滨莫非网奴，BT死了，谷鸽走了，校内杀了，优酷禁 了，4亿网民还剩什么？难道学习东朝鲜全民只上新华网？全面网禁开始，如战，便立潮头

38、专制Z府天天都在担心自己能不能维 持统治，所以它要稳定压倒一切以防人民揭竿而起；民ZHU  Z府天天都在担心自己能不能竞选连任，所以它要尽量讨好它的人民以防人民不投它的票。

39、搜狐是真TMD恶心，强行在评论框里显示“google走了，为什么不试试搜狗呢”？

 //妈的，没有米饭，老子也不能去吃屎呀

40. "东朝鲜 南朝鲜 北朝鲜三支队伍都进了世界杯

只有西朝鲜在家里YY" 

Tao Guan Yang Hui -- what is the best translation

I had, some five years ago, introduced Deng Xiaoping's strategy of Tao Guang Yang Hui (TGYH). There had been many different translations in English, and there is no perfect one.

The best translation I found, actually, are the ones via Fareed Zakaria (a very intelligent academic whose track record has been unbiased) or Mike Phillsbury (whose knowledge in Chinese is proficient but has been arguing for China as a threat for most of the past two decades).

• "China must "tao guang yang hui," which, literally translated, means "Hide brightness, nourish obscurity," or, as the official Beijing interpretation translates the four-character idiom, "Bide our time and build up our capabilities." -- Philsbury paper
• "One of the Chinese expressions is just three words. It is worth learning sometime. You might want to say it. It is ”bu chu tou.” It means ”don’t stick your head up,” and Deng Xiaoping said this after the Soviet Union collapsed and a lot of other Communist Chinese leaders said to him, we are now number one of the Communist parties in the world. We need to assume world leadership of the Communist movement now that the Soviets are collapsed and are gone. This is China’s destiny. And he said, ”bu chu tou.” the meaning is, let’s not get out in front, let’s not draw the attention of the chief hegemon of the world who brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. That is, the United States......A second expression that Deng Xiaoping drew from almost 3,000 years ago, ”tao guang yang hui.” There is no way to translate it into English. It means to put your brightness in your quiver behind your back and then to nourish your capabilities secretly. The official Chinese translation is ”bide our time and build up our capabilities.” -- Philsbury in US Congress (note: I do not know where Phillsbury get he "offical" translation from, but if there is, General Xiong is now saying that is a big mistake. According to Xiong, such translation comes from one China published dictionary.

Recently a PRC general (Xiong Guangkai) has raised the issue of how the translation was manipulated, e.g. in the Pentagon paper. In the paper General Xiong discussed how it was mis-interpreted, unintentionally, or intentional by people inside or outside China (yes, there are as many hawks inside China who would like to interpret Deng's doctrine the way pentagon tried to portray). Xiong emphasized the original Chinese phrase meant to say "hiding the light and nourish", and there is no element of "time", which is very true.

The paper below has the various translations in English texts which can be easily identified even if you do not read Chinese. Xiong advocated that "hiding one's light" is probably the closest translation. But I have always preferred the literal translation, which leaves the interpretation and imagination open. One can speculate on Deng's original intention, (e.g. some would argue the ambiguity also served to quiet the hawks within the PLA) but the literal meaning and its historical (proverbial) context are fundamental to how Deng's words could be interpreted, e.g., by the current leadership in China.

Related link: What Will China Want? (PDF) (Jeffrey Legro, Sep 2007)

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p.s. The DoD (pentagon) report opens the Chapter on "Understanding China's Strategy" with the 24 words (6 sets times 4 words) by Deng

• "冷静观察，稳住阵脚，沉着应付，韬光养晦，善于守拙，决不当头。"

and translated as

• "observe calmly, secure our position, cope with affairs calmly, hide our capacities and bide our time, be good at maintaining a low profile, and never claim leadership"

The first 2 sets (8 words) are well translate. As to "cope with affairs calmly", I may add both calmly and also "take one's time before reacting". the 4th set is TGYH which are well discussed about, and the pentagon translation is quite unfaithful (which took the extended interpretation rather than its original words), see Phillsbury above. The last 8 words literally means "be good at guarding one's insufficiency, and never stick one's head out"

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Below is Xiong's essay in Chinese

熊光楷：中文词汇“韬光养晦”翻译的外交战略意义2010年05月31日 17:33公共外交季刊【大 中 小】 【打印】 共有评论1条
核心提示：“韬光养晦”已成为中国对外战略方针的重要组成部分，也是理解和把握中国外交政策的关键词之一。正确理解和准确翻译“韬光养晦”，将有助于更好地向外界介绍中国的和平外交政策，促进国际社会对中国和平发展道路和传统战略文化的了解，维护并进一步塑造中国良好的国际形象。

20世纪80年代末90年代初，邓小平同志基于对中国国情的深刻认识和世界局势的全面把握，提出了“韬光养晦”的外交战略思想。时至今日，“韬光养晦”已成为中国对外战略方针的重要组成部分，也是理解和把握中国外交政策的关键词之一。当前，中国与世界的关系发生了历史性变化，国内国际两个大局互动日益紧密。对“韬光养晦”一词的正确理解和准确翻译，无疑将有助于更好地向外界介绍中国的和平外交政策，促进国际社会对中国和平发展道路和传统战略文化的了解，维护并进一步塑造中国良好的国际形象。这也正是我们在公共外交中需要重视和解决的一个问题。

对“韬光养晦”的曲解

令人遗憾的是，多年来不少西方人士在解读“韬光养晦”一词时，或多或少存在着翻译不准确，甚至曲解的现象。这些错误的译法和解读又往往被一些别有用心的势力所利用，以此来攻击抹黑中国、鼓吹“中国威胁论”。例如，美国国防部在2002年首次公布的《中国军力报告》中，就专门引用并特别强调了邓小平同志过去提出的“冷静观察、沉着应付、稳住阵脚、韬光养晦、决不当头、有所作为”等战略方针，其中“韬光养晦”所用英文为“hide our capabilities and bide our time”，意即“掩盖自己的能力，等待时机东山再起”。此后，美国政府在2003年、2004年、2005年、2006年、2007年和2009年等六个年度的《中国军力报告》中都采用了同样的英文表述。另外，国外还有一些英文书籍或文章将“韬光养晦”译为“hide one's ability and pretend to be weak”，意即“隐藏能力、假装弱小”；“conceal one's true intention”，意即“隐藏真实目的”；“hide one's ambitions and disguise its claws”，意即“隐藏野心、收起爪子”。以上等等，不一而足，其中的潜台词无外乎：“韬光养晦”是中国在特定的内外形势下所采取的一种权宜之计，是在“隐蔽自己的真实意图”，“等待时机成熟再出手”。

无庸置疑，上述这些解读完全歪曲了中国和平外交战略方针的内涵和实质，给我们的正常对外交往造成了不应有的负面影响。我在出国访问和参加国内外一些学术交流活动时，多次就这一问题做过解释和说明。2006年，我在中国外交学会代表团赴美访问期间，与美前国务卿舒尔茨、基辛格和前驻华大使芮效俭等会谈时专门提出，美国政府在《中国军力报告》中对“韬光养晦”的翻译是错误的，美方应当重视这一问题，避免因此引发双方的战略误判，影响中美关系稳定发展的大局。

“韬光养晦”翻译偏差的原因

应该说，“韬光养晦”之所以被西方曲解责难，一方面深刻反映了西方国家一些人士对华固有的政治战略偏见，以及少数反华势力顽固坚持的冷战思维，另一方面也与我们国内对“韬光养晦”的翻译和解释存在疏漏与偏差有关。例如，外语教学与研究出版社2006年出版的《新世纪汉英大辞典》，就将“韬光养晦”翻译为“hide one's capabilities and bideone's time”，这与美国《中国军力报告》中的译法几乎一样。外文出版社2007年出版的中英对照《生活中的中国智慧》一书，将“韬光养晦”解释为“一种为人的策略”，“在时机尚未成熟时，最好先隐藏自己的才能，等待合适的机会”。其对应的英文表述是“to conceal one's fame andability”；“temporary retirement to bide one's time before goingon the offensive”。

之所以会出现这样的误解，大致可以归结为以下两个原因。一是对“韬光养晦”这一成语的理解有误。从本质上说，“韬光养晦”是指行事低调、谦让。这是我们中华民族历来倡导的一种人生美德和哲学思想，不可等同于“阴谋”“钻营”等处世伎俩。也有人错误地将“韬光养晦”与“卧薪尝胆”相提并论。众所周知，“卧薪尝胆”讲的是春秋时期越王勾践复仇雪恨的故事，因此“韬光养晦”就被联想演绎出了所谓“等待时机”“东山再起”之意。这种不正确的理解和演绎，不应作为重要词语翻译的依据。二是对“韬光养晦”外交战略思想的理解有误。“韬光养晦”是我国重要的对外战略方针，决非一时的策略和权宜之计。邓小平同志提出的“韬光养晦”内涵丰富而深刻，既有深厚的历史底蕴，也符合国情和世情，强调我们应保持低调，谦虚谨慎，不称霸，不搞对抗，集中精力抓好经济建设，一心一意谋求和平发展。中国奉行“韬光养晦”的对外战略方针，出发点不是所谓“待机而动”“东山再起”，而恰恰是强调要抓住当前国家发展的重要战略机遇期，实现中华民族的伟大复兴，推动世界和平发展。这已是被多年来中国的外交实践所反复证明的不争事实。

正确翻译“韬光养晦”的外交战略意义

可喜的是，2009年9月，上海辞书出版社出版的由陈至立同志担任主编的第6版《辞海》中，首次增加了“韬光养晦”的辞条，其解释为“隐藏才能，不使外露”。与此相关的释义还包括：“韬”指“弓袋”，并有“掩藏”之意；“韬光”指“敛藏光彩”，比喻“掩藏声名才华”；“韬晦”指“收敛锋芒，隐藏才能行迹”。可见“韬光养晦”的核心含意就是不要锋芒毕露，完全没有“掩盖企图”“等待东山再起”之意。第6版《辞海》的准确解释，为我们更好地理解中国对外战略方针，更好地开展对外交往和公共外交工作提供了权威依据。根据《辞海》的释义，再对“韬光养晦”进行准确翻译，将大大减少跨文化交流中出现的误解与隔阂。

我还注意到，美国《新闻周刊》国际版主编扎卡里亚2008年写了一本题为《后美国的世界》的书。他在论述中国对外战略方针时也引用了“韬光养晦”，而他使用的英文译法是“hiding its light”。这一译法源自《圣经》中的一段话：“Neither do men light a candle, and put it undera bushel, but on a candlestick；and it giveth light unto all thatare in the house.”（注：giveth为古体英语，与give语义相同）中文可译为“人点灯，不放在斗底下，是放在灯台上，就照亮一家的人。”后人将上述典故引申为谚语“hide one's light under a bushel”，意指不露锋芒。不过，用“hiding its light”来翻译“韬光养晦”仍有一些不确切。尽管如此，这种借用西方文化中众所周知的典故或是按西方思维习惯翻译中国成语的做法，给我们带来了有益启示。过去，我们也曾用“keep a lowprofile”（意为“保持低姿态、保持低调”）翻译“韬光养晦”，但这离完全准确表达其内涵也仍有一定距离，国外人士还难于理解到原词中深邃的含义。

可以说，如何翻译“韬光养晦”这样涉及中国外交战略方针的词语，关系重大。应在准确把握这些词语权威解释的基础上，力争运用精致的而不 是粗疏的、活泼的而不是死板的、有亲和力的而不是生硬的外国语言，将其 应有之义准确表达出来。这对于我们更好地推进公共外交、塑造中国的良好 国际形象具有重要的意义。

熊光楷：本刊编委，中国国际战略研究基金会名誉会长，曾任中国人民解 放军副总参谋长，上将军衔。

Map: Energy Consumption of the World

Source: Guardian (via big picture)

country ball world

math "riddle"

a) 21 = 252 = 7670

b) 2 (?) 6 = 8 (?) 8

hint: today

 In short, it is ultrasound that killed the girls, though one-child policy exacerbated it.

 The Economist made an assertion with no basis, about the 'minority' in china do not have a preference for boy or do not like abortion. All this can imply be explained by the lack of one-child pressure.

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Gendercide

The worldwide war on baby girls

Technology, declining fertility and ancient prejudice are combining to unbalance societies

Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

XINRAN XUE, a Chinese writer, describes visiting a peasant family in the Yimeng area of Shandong province. The wife was giving birth. “We had scarcely sat down in the kitchen”, she writes (see article), “when we heard a moan of pain from the bedroom next door…The cries from the inner room grew louder—and abruptly stopped. There was a low sob, and then a man’s gruff voice said accusingly: ‘Useless thing!’
“Suddenly, I thought I heard a slight movement in the slops pail behind me,” Miss Xinran remembers. “To my absolute horror, I saw a tiny foot poking out of the pail. The midwife must have dropped that tiny baby alive into the slops pail! I nearly threw myself at it, but the two policemen [who had accompanied me] held my shoulders in a firm grip. ‘Don’t move, you can’t save it, it’s too late.’
“‘But that’s...murder...and you’re the police!’ The little foot was still now. The policemen held on to me for a few more minutes. ‘Doing a baby girl is not a big thing around here,’ [an] older woman said comfortingly. ‘That’s a living child,’ I said in a shaking voice, pointing at the slops pail. ‘It’s not a child,’ she corrected me. ‘It’s a girl baby, and we can’t keep it. Around these parts, you can’t get by without a son. Girl babies don’t count.’”
In January 2010 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) showed what can happen to a country when girl babies don’t count. Within ten years, the academy said, one in five young men would be unable to find a bride because of the dearth of young women—a figure unprecedented in a country at peace.
The number is based on the sexual discrepancy among people aged 19 and below. According to CASS, China in 2020 will have 30m-40m more men of this age than young women. For comparison, there are 23m boys below the age of 20 in Germany, France and Britain combined and around 40m American boys and young men. So within ten years, China faces the prospect of having the equivalent of the whole young male population of America, or almost twice that of Europe’s three largest countries, with little prospect of marriage, untethered to a home of their own and without the stake in society that marriage and children provide.
Gendercide—to borrow the title of a 1985 book by Mary Anne Warren—is often seen as an unintended consequence of China’s one-child policy, or as a product of poverty or ignorance. But that cannot be the whole story. The surplus of bachelors—called in China guanggun, or “bare branches”— seems to have accelerated between 1990 and 2005, in ways not obviously linked to the one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979. And, as is becoming clear, the war against baby girls is not confined to China.
Parts of India have sex ratios as skewed as anything in its northern neighbour. Other East Asian countries—South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan—have peculiarly high numbers of male births. So, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, have former communist countries in the Caucasus and the western Balkans. Even subsets of America’s population are following suit, though not the population as a whole.
The real cause, argues Nick Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, is not any country’s particular policy but “the fateful collision between overweening son preference, the use of rapidly spreading prenatal sex-determination technology and declining fertility.” These are global trends. And the selective destruction of baby girls is global, too.
Boys are slightly more likely to die in infancy than girls. To compensate, more boys are born than girls so there will be equal numbers of young men and women at puberty. In all societies that record births, between 103 and 106 boys are normally born for every 100 girls. The ratio has been so stable over time that it appears to be the natural order of things.
That order has changed fundamentally in the past 25 years. In China the sex ratio for the generation born between 1985 and 1989 was 108, already just outside the natural range. For the generation born in 2000-04, it was 124 (ie, 124 boys were born in those years for every 100 girls). According to CASS the ratio today is 123 boys per 100 girls. These rates are biologically impossible without human intervention.
The national averages hide astonishing figures at the provincial level. According to an analysis of Chinese household data carried out in late 2005 and reported in the British Medical Journal*, only one region, Tibet, has a sex ratio within the bounds of nature. Fourteen provinces—mostly in the east and south—have sex ratios at birth of 120 and above, and three have unprecedented levels of more than 130. As CASS says, “the gender imbalance has been growing wider year after year.”
The BMJ study also casts light on one of the puzzles about China’s sexual imbalance. How far has it been exaggerated by the presumed practice of not reporting the birth of baby daughters in the hope of getting another shot at bearing a son? Not much, the authors think. If this explanation were correct, you would expect to find sex ratios falling precipitously as girls who had been hidden at birth start entering the official registers on attending school or the doctor. In fact, there is no such fall. The sex ratio of 15-year-olds in 2005 was not far from the sex ratio at birth in 1990. The implication is that sex-selective abortion, not under-registration of girls, accounts for the excess of boys.

Other countries have wildly skewed sex ratios without China’s draconian population controls (see chart 1). Taiwan’s sex ratio also rose from just above normal in 1980 to 110 in the early 1990s; it remains just below that level today. During the same period, South Korea’s sex ratio rose from just above normal to 117 in 1990—then the highest in the world—before falling back to more natural levels. Both these countries were already rich, growing quickly and becoming more highly educated even while the balance between the sexes was swinging sharply towards males.
South Korea is experiencing some surprising consequences. The surplus of bachelors in a rich country has sucked in brides from abroad. In 2008, 11% of marriages were “mixed”, mostly between a Korean man and a foreign woman. This is causing tensions in a hitherto homogenous society, which is often hostile to the children of mixed marriages. The trend is especially marked in rural areas, where the government thinks half the children of farm households will be mixed by 2020. The children are common enough to have produced a new word: “Kosians”, or Korean-Asians.
China is nominally a communist country, but elsewhere it was communism’s collapse that was associated with the growth of sexual disparities. After the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, there was an upsurge in the ratio of boys to girls in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Their sex ratios rose from normal levels in 1991 to 115-120 by 2000. A rise also occurred in several Balkan states after the wars of Yugoslav succession. The ratio in Serbia and Macedonia is around 108. There are even signs of distorted sex ratios in America, among various groups of Asian-Americans. In 1975, calculates Mr Eberstadt, the sex ratio for Chinese-, Japanese- and Filipino-Americans was between 100 and 106. In 2002, it was 107 to 109.
But the country with the most remarkable record is that other supergiant, India. India does not produce figures for sex ratios at birth, so its numbers are not strictly comparable with the others. But there is no doubt that the number of boys has been rising relative to girls and that, as in China, there are large regional disparities. The north-western states of Punjab and Haryana have sex ratios as high as the provinces of China’s east and south. Nationally, the ratio for children up to six years of age rose from a biologically unexceptionable 104 in 1981 to a biologically impossible 108 in 2001. In 1991, there was a single district with a sex ratio over 125; by 2001, there were 46.
Conventional wisdom about such disparities is that they are the result of “backward thinking” in old-fashioned societies or—in China—of the one-child policy. By implication, reforming the policy or modernising the society (by, for example, enhancing the status of women) should bring the sex ratio back to normal. But this is not always true and, where it is, the road to normal sex ratios is winding and bumpy.
Not all traditional societies show a marked preference for sons over daughters. But in those that do—especially those in which the family line passes through the son and in which he is supposed to look after his parents in old age—a son is worth more than a daughter. A girl is deemed to have joined her husband’s family on marriage, and is lost to her parents. As a Hindu saying puts it, “Raising a daughter is like watering your neighbours’ garden.”
“Son preference” is discernible—overwhelming, even—in polling evidence. In 1999 the government of India asked women what sex they wanted their next child to be. One third of those without children said a son, two-thirds had no preference and only a residual said a daughter. Polls carried out in Pakistan and Yemen show similar results. Mothers in some developing countries say they want sons, not daughters, by margins of ten to one. In China midwives charge more for delivering a son than a daughter.

Chasing puppy-dogs’ tails

The unusual thing about son preference is that it rises sharply at second and later births (see chart 2). Among Indian women with two children (of either sex), 60% said they wanted a son next time, almost twice the preference for first-borns. This reflected the desire of those with two daughters for a son. The share rose to 75% for those with three children. The difference in parental attitudes between first-borns and subsequent children is large and significant.
Until the 1980s people in poor countries could do little about this preference: before birth, nature took its course. But in that decade, ultrasound scanning and other methods of detecting the sex of a child before birth began to make their appearance. These technologies changed everything. Doctors in India started advertising ultrasound scans with the slogan “Pay 5,000 rupees ($110) today and save 50,000 rupees tomorrow” (the saving was on the cost of a daughter’s dowry). Parents who wanted a son, but balked at killing baby daughters, chose abortion in their millions.
The use of sex-selective abortion was banned in India in 1994 and in China in 1995. It is illegal in most countries (though Sweden legalised the practice in 2009). But since it is almost impossible to prove that an abortion has been carried out for reasons of sex selection, the practice remains widespread. An ultrasound scan costs about $12, which is within the scope of many—perhaps most—Chinese and Indian families. In one hospital in Punjab, in northern India, the only girls born after a round of ultrasound scans had been mistakenly identified as boys, or else had a male twin.
The spread of fetal-imaging technology has not only skewed the sex ratio but also explains what would otherwise be something of a puzzle: sexual disparities tend to rise with income and education, which you would not expect if “backward thinking” was all that mattered. In India, some of the most prosperous states—Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat—have the worst sex ratios. In China, the higher a province’s literacy rate, the more skewed its sex ratio. The ratio also rises with income per head.
In Punjab Monica Das Gupta of the World Bank discovered that second and third daughters of well-educated mothers were more than twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday as their brothers, regardless of their birth order. The discrepancy was far lower in poorer households. Ms Das Gupta argues that women do not necessarily use improvements in education and income to help daughters. Richer, well-educated families share their poorer neighbours’ preference for sons and, because they tend to have smaller families, come under greater pressure to produce a son and heir if their first child is an unlooked-for daughter**.
So modernisation and rising incomes make it easier and more desirable to select the sex of your children. And on top of that smaller families combine with greater wealth to reinforce the imperative to produce a son. When families are large, at least one male child will doubtless come along to maintain the family line. But if you have only one or two children, the birth of a daughter may be at a son’s expense. So, with rising incomes and falling fertility, more and more people live in the smaller, richer families that are under the most pressure to produce a son.
In China the one-child policy increases that pressure further. Unexpectedly, though, it is the relaxation of the policy, rather than the policy pure and simple, which explains the unnatural upsurge in the number of boys.

In most Chinese cities couples are usually allowed to have only one child—the policy in its pure form. But in the countryside, where 55% of China’s population lives, there are three variants of the one-child policy. In the coastal provinces some 40% of couples are permitted a second child if their first is a girl. In central and southern provinces everyone is permitted a second child either if the first is a girl or if the parents suffer “hardship”, a criterion determined by local officials. In the far west and Inner Mongolia, the provinces do not really operate a one-child policy at all. Minorities are permitted second—sometimes even third—children, whatever the sex of the first-born (see map).
The provinces in this last group are the only ones with close to normal sex ratios. They are sparsely populated and inhabited by ethnic groups that do not much like abortion and whose family systems do not disparage the value of daughters so much. The provinces with by far the highest ratios of boys to girls are in the second group, the ones with the most exceptions to the one-child policy. As the BMJ study shows, these exceptions matter because of the preference for sons in second or third births.
For an example, take Guangdong, China’s most populous province. Its overall sex ratio is 120, which is very high. But if you take first births alone, the ratio is “only” 108. That is outside the bounds of normality but not by much. If you take just second children, however, which are permitted in the province, the ratio leaps to 146 boys for every 100 girls. And for the relatively few of births where parents are permitted a third child, the sex ratio is 167. Even this startling ratio is not the outer limit. In Anhui province, among third children, there are 227 boys for every 100 girls, while in Beijing municipality (which also permits exceptions in rural areas), the sex ratio reaches a hard-to-credit 275. There are almost three baby boys for each baby girl.
Ms Das Gupta found something similar in India. First-born daughters were treated the same as their brothers; younger sisters were more likely to die in infancy. The rule seems to be that parents will joyfully embrace a daughter as their first child. But they will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure subsequent children are sons.

The hazards of bare branches

Throughout human history, young men have been responsible for the vast preponderance of crime and violence—especially single men in countries where status and social acceptance depend on being married and having children, as it does in China and India. A rising population of frustrated single men spells trouble.
The crime rate has almost doubled in China during the past 20 years of rising sex ratios, with stories abounding of bride abduction, the trafficking of women, rape and prostitution. A study into whether these things were connected† concluded that they were, and that higher sex ratios accounted for about one-seventh of the rise in crime. In India, too, there is a correlation between provincial crime rates and sex ratios. In “Bare Branches”††, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer gave warning that the social problems of biased sex ratios would lead to more authoritarian policing. Governments, they say, “must decrease the threat to society posed by these young men. Increased authoritarianism in an effort to crack down on crime, gangs, smuggling and so forth can be one result.”
Violence is not the only consequence. In parts of India, the cost of dowries is said to have fallen (see article). Where people pay a bride price (ie, the groom’s family gives money to the bride’s), that price has risen. During the 1990s, China saw the appearance of tens of thousands of “extra-birth guerrilla troops”—couples from one-child areas who live in a legal limbo, shifting shift restlessly from city to city in order to shield their two or three children from the authorities’ baleful eye. And, according to the World Health Organisation, female suicide rates in China are among the highest in the world (as are South Korea’s). Suicide is the commonest form of death among Chinese rural women aged 15-34; young mothers kill themselves by drinking agricultural fertilisers, which are easy to come by. The journalist Xinran Xue thinks they cannot live with the knowledge that they have aborted or killed their baby daughters.
Some of the consequences of the skewed sex ratio have been unexpected. It has probably increased China’s savings rate. This is because parents with a single son save to increase his chances of attracting a wife in China’s ultra-competitive marriage market. Shang-Jin Wei of Columbia University and Xiaobo Zhang of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC, compared savings rates for households with sons versus those with daughters. “We find not only that households with sons save more than households with daughters in all regions,” says Mr Wei, “but that households with sons tend to raise their savings rate if they also happen to live in a region with a more skewed sex ratio.” They calculate that about half the increase in China’s savings in the past 25 years can be attributed to the rise in the sex ratio. If true, this would suggest that economic-policy changes to boost consumption will be less effective than the government hopes.
Over the next generation, many of the problems associated with sex selection will get worse. The social consequences will become more evident because the boys born in large numbers over the past decade will reach maturity then. Meanwhile, the practice of sex selection itself may spread because fertility rates are continuing to fall and ultrasound scanners reach throughout the developing world.

Yet the story of the destruction of baby girls does not end in deepest gloom. At least one country—South Korea—has reversed its cultural preference for sons and cut the distorted sex ratio (see chart 3). There are reasons for thinking China and India might follow suit.
South Korea was the first country to report exceptionally high sex ratios and has been the first to cut them. Between 1985 and 2003, the share of South Korean women who told national health surveyors that they felt “they must have a son” fell by almost two-thirds, from 48% to 17%. After a lag of a decade, the sex ratio began to fall in the mid-1990s and is now 110 to 100. Ms Das Gupta argues that though it takes a long time for social norms favouring sons to alter, and though the transition can be delayed by the introduction of ultrasound scans, eventually change will come. Modernisation not only makes it easier for parents to control the sex of their children, it also changes people’s values and undermines those norms which set a higher store on sons. At some point, one trend becomes more important than the other.
It is just possible that China and India may be reaching that point now. The census of 2000 and CASS study both showed the sex ratio stable at around 120. At the very least, it seems to have stopped rising. Locally, Ms Das Gupta argues†††, the provinces which had the highest sex ratios (and have two-thirds of China’s population) have seen a deceleration in their ratios since 2000, and provinces with a quarter of the population have seen their ratios fall. In India, one study found that the cultural preference for sons has been falling, too, and that the sex ratio, as in much of China, is rising more slowly. In villages in Haryana, grandmothers sit veiled and silent while men are present. But their daughters sit and chat uncovered because, they say, they have seen unveiled women at work or on television so much that at last it seems normal to them.
Ms Das Gupta points out that, though the two giants are much poorer than South Korea, their governments are doing more than it ever did to persuade people to treat girls equally (through anti-discrimination laws and media campaigns). The unintended consequences of sex selection have been vast. They may get worse. But, at long last, she reckons, “there seems to be an incipient turnaround in the phenomenon of ‘missing girls’ in Asia.”

how to save a bankcrupted company

Bubble? China vs Japan in 1960s-1990s

This graph says all. (see the Economist article as well), it is more like the 1960s than the 1990s.

However, if China were to follow Japan's footsteps into its 1970s, its GDP/cap growth will slow down to around 4-5% p.a. within the next decade.