New technology combined with ancient prejudices are producing communities in Asia with thousands more men than women, it has emerged. Ultrasound scans which can detect the sex of babies have contributed to a massive rise in abortions of female fetuses in cultures which value males much more highly. In China and Northern India, more than 120 boys are now being born for every 100 girls - up from  an imbalance of 108 boys to every 100 girls in the 1980s, according to statistics published in The Economist. These rates are biologically impossible without human intervention. In rural areas, this ratio is even higher - in some Chinese provinces the ratio is an unprecedented 130 to 100. According to The Economist, 'it is no exaggeration to call this gendercide'. 'Women are missing in their millions - aborted, killed, neglected to death,' said The Economist report. 'In 1990, an Indian economist, Amartya Sen, put the number at 100m; the toll is higher now.' Distorted sex ratios are also being recorded in other East Asian countries, including Taiwan and Singapore, former communist states in the western Balkans and the Caucasus. According to The Economist, the reasons for the rise in abortions are three-fold: The ancient preference for sons, a modern desire for smaller families, and ultrasound scanning that can identify the sex of a fetus. 'In societies where four or six children were common, a boy would almost certainly come along eventually; son preference did not need to exist at the expense of daughters,' said The Economist report. 'But now couples want two children - or, as in China, are allowed only one - they will sacrifice unborn daughters to their pursuit of a son. 'That is why sex ratios are most distorted in the modern, open parts of China and India. 'It is also why ratios are more skewed after the first child: parents may accept a daughter first time round but will do anything to ensure their next - and probably last - child is a boy. 'The boy-girl ratio is above 200 for a third child in some places.' Statistics from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences - published by The Economist - estimate that by 2020, China will have 30million-40million more men aged 19 and below than women in the same age group. This will result in one in five young men in the country being unable to find a bride, according to CASS. According to The Economist, the crime rate has almost doubled in China during the past 20 years of rising sex ratios, including bride abduction, the trafficking of women rape and prostitution. A study by the Institute for the Study of Labour in Bonn, Germany, into whether these elements were connected found that they were, and that higher sex ratios accounted for about one seventh of the rise in crime. And, according to the World Health Organisation, female suicide rates in China are among the highest in the world.




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