Social engineering is a wonderful thing to behold. Attempts by do-gooders to force changes in human behaviour invariably lead to some fascinating consequences.

And nowhere has that phenomenon become more apparent than in modern China where 28 years of rigorously enforced family planning have resulted in the country having 37 million more males than females.

Now in some ways the one child per family policy introduced in 1979 has had a beneficial result. According to the Government controlled Xinhua newsagency, the policy has helped China to reduce the speed of population growth, delaying by four years the 1.3 billion figure reached at the beginning of 2005. Among the prices paid is a s-x ratio that has given China a surplus of males three and a half times the total number of men in Australia.

The reason for the growing imbalance is clear. When limited to one child, couples prefer, for a variety of cultural reasons, for that child to be a male. Female foetuses are regularly aborted. Statistics from the Information Office of the State Council show the s-x ratio for newborns is 119 boys to 100 girls. The China Family Planning Association (CFPA), recently called for attention to be given to “the severe challenges in population affairs.”

The CFPA drew attention to the fact that the s-x ratio for newborns aged zero to four had reached 163.5 boys to 100 girls by the end of 2005 in Lianyungang, a city in east China’s Jiangsu Province. Similarly alarming figures have also been recorded in Hainan, Henan, Guangdong and Anhui, with Hainan chalking up a ratio of 136 to 100.

A total of 99 cities had sex ratios higher than 125 and the national average figure reached 119 in 2005, the CFPA said. The Association maintains the normal s-x ratio should be kept below 107:100, according to the United Nations standards.

In the face of such a dramatic change in the population balance it appears that there will soon be changes and stricter enforcement of the one-child policy.

A report in the People’s Daily quoted Wang Yongqing, deputy head of the Office of Legislative Affairs of the State Council saying, “several laws and regulations on family planning have been listed on State Council’s legislative plan for 2007 including the regulation to ban s-x-selection abortion.”

The State Council are studying the regulation and will release it at proper time, he said.

The new regulation will make clear the responsibility of governments and related departments at all levels and to ban s-x-selection abortion for non-medical purpose.

Though s-x-selection is banned by the existing Population and Family Planning Law and the Law on Maternal and Infant Health, there are currently no provisions on the applicable punishment for such acts.