Beijing, June 30 (IANS) A population and family planning commission in China’s Shanghai city has said most children born outside its family planning policy last year were born to migrants and their preference for boys caused an imbalanced gender ratio.
The population commission has said it will enhance cooperation with hometown authorities of migrant people to improve family planning management and continue girl preferential policies, Shanghai Daily reported.
Shanghai’s birth gender ratio in 2011 was 113.1 boys for every 100 girls, higher than the expected 103 to 107 boys for every 100 girls. The national average is 117.78 boys to 100 girls.
Last year, about 180,000 babies born in the city included 78,500 children of migrants, who lived in the city for over six months, the authorities said.
According to officials, the government has started a special campaign to administer ultrasound machines and crackdown on illegal clinics following media reports stating unlicensed facilities using animal-use ultrasound machines for sex determination tests.
A total of 25 suspects were held and 146 illegal clinics closed in the city while over 17,000 illegal ultrasound checks and abortion promoting advertisements removed within a month between May and June.
Officials, however, admit the difficulty to find underground clinics operating in rural areas and the ones frequently changing locations.
They say that the imbalance is caused by migrants, mostly farmers, who prefer boys to girls.
Last year, among migrants, the birth gender ratio stood at 119.1 boys to every 100 girls while the ratio among the registered population was 106.7 boys for every 100 girls in the city.
