Nuclear bombs and population bombs

[5_rings]

Ever since news of North Korea's nuclear bomb test broke, I've been surveying students for their reaction to the developments. Some laugh at it in an "oh, my redneck cousin, we don't like to talk about him" sort of way, while others actually have serious commentary

Comments

[dubaiwalla]

It's a pity your journal is friends-only; I'd really have liked to send people to this entry.

[5_rings]

Ask and ye shall receive. I cleaned it up a bit, though.

[dubaiwalla]

Thanks, I'll link to it in my next post.

[surrealkitten]

thank you for writing another thoughtful, fair and enlightening post about what's going on in china.

[goreism]

Have you seen Emily Oster's paper on the gender gap in China (and other Asian countries)? It preceded the widespread availability of abortion; Oster attributes it to the fact that the boy-girl ratio among carriers of Hepatitis B is significantly higher than that of uninfected people. Here's a Slate article; there was also an article by Robert Barro in BusinessWeek and one in the New York Times.

[5_rings]

Fascinating article. I had not seen it before. About the only thing that would make Oster's work more enlightening in terms of the Chinese situation would be to compare sex ratio rates and HBV prevalance within large cities to these same data in the countryside. I'd suspect the countryside to have higher HBV rates than the city, so more of the "missing women" there would be explained by the virus, whereas in the city, with presumably lower rates of HBV, more of the "missing women" would be explained by sex-selection practices. Of course, the data could prove me wrong and there could be roughly equal rates of HBV infection in both urban and rural populations.

[chriswaugh_bj]

I'm curious about where you got your information. What you've written here tallies neither with my experience of rural China nor with everything else I've read or heard on the issue.

There have been many reports about how girls in the more remote parts of western China, for example, are often denied an education, because what's the use of educating a girl? She's only going to get married, cook, clean and make babies, after all. Doesn't take even a primary school education to do that.

[5_rings]

Depends on the economic levels of the people from the countryside. I think your characterization is right for the poorest of the poor, whose value system has been retarded by their economic situation. On the other hand, I've talked to hundreds of university students about this, and the pattern of "brother who works, daughter who goes to school" is almost universal among university students who come from the periphery.

What I didn't include in the essay is the possibility that the prettier of the uneducated countryside women would also go to the cities -- much as uneducated migrant workers -- and find work as prostitutes, massage parlor girls, and the like, before "graduating" to the position of mistress. Unlike the students, however, I'm not able to interview these girls about their backgrounds. Perhaps I can enlist experienced denizens of Alibaba's to help. Heh.

[chriswaugh_bj]

Ali Baba's certainly would be a good place to start your research.... There's a lot of regulars there about whom I have some doubts.

But my personal experience suggests both boys and girls are educated as far as they can be, but that's limited to one village in a relatively 'affluent' (meaning not dirt poor) corner of northwestern Beijing. Also, I've taught plenty of male students from rural or semi-rural backgrounds. Then again, this is not an issue I ever thought of discussing with students.

[5_rings]

Most of the students I talked to come from Hebei and the Dongbei Provinces. Maybe things are slightly different there, I'm not sure. This underscores a major frustration I had when plotting comparative political science analyses of China -- there's just not enough transparency here.

The sad thing is that I know exactly which regulars I would approach to begin a process of interviewing bar girls and KTV girls...

[clockworklauren]

hey, it's lauren (flaming_midget). i got a new journal.