China's family planning does not depend on induced abortion but mainly benefit from good contraceptive measures encouraged and funded by the government.

 The rate of induced abortion in China was much lower than the average level worldwide, according to Chinese population experts. Though the number of induced abortions is big due to China's large population, the rate is much lower than those in Japan, the Republic of Korea and eastern European countries.

During the 1960s, the abortion rate was 5 to 7 in the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Romania. In the late 1950s, the figure for Japan was 4. In the early 1980s, the rate was nearly 3 in the Republic of Korea. The abortion rate in China was 1.7 in 1983.

From 1971 to 1981, the average number of children a Chinese woman of child-bearing age would have in her life fell from 5.4 to2.72. The drop in the birthrate was influenced by many factors, with contraception the most important during this period and abortion the least important factor.

"The Chinese government calls for young women of child-bearing age to take contraceptive measures," said Chen Wei, a demographer at the Demography and Development Research Center at China's People's University.

The government also emphasized delaying marriage and pregnancy to control the country's birthrate. "China has become a nation with a low birthrate and also a low abortion rate by the end of the 20th century," Chen said, adding that the induced abortion rate fell rapidly in China with the adjustment of its family planning policy and the promotion of medical services for childbirth.

(People's Daily, October 23, 2002)

Baby Gender Checkup Strictly Controlled

The health authority in Beijing enacted in May 2004 a set of policies aiming to prevent medical institutes from conducting operations to identify baby's gender before their birth for other-than-medical purposes. All the concerned institutes were not allowed to practice the gender checkup operations without permission and in case such operations were necessary for medical reasons, they must be carried out in officially warranted places, said Deng Xiaohong, deputy director with Beijing Health Bureau. Deng said that the new policies were issued to rectify the unbalanced current gender proportion among the newly born babies. The normal sex ratio between male and female infants in Beijing is 104:100 to 106:100, but the figure was 108:100 for residents and 128:100 for immigrants in 2003, which indicated serious man-made controls over the natural birth, Deng said. Quite a few medical organizations provide gender examination service for economic reason because there are still many parents, the farmer immigrants in particular, prefer a son to a daughter. Official institutes must stop such service at once and those for medical purpose should also receive supervision from the health authority, said Deng. Medical expert Ren Zhengmei said that gender check is usually applied to prevent some visible symptoms such as limb abnormality, cleft palate, innate heart trouble and others. Each year, approximately 600 infants in Beijing suffer such diseases. Experts said that unbalanced gender ratio has turned out to be a nationwide problem now and they feared that gender check service is out of control in the country. The situation may be even worse in some inland villages where the service is provided by unqualified or illegal institutes. (Xinhua News Agency May 12, 2004)