Chinese has a major shortage of women,
and birth rates are plummeting.
As China faces a population crisis,
a new database is asking:
Are you breed ready?
This is China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
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You know, one thing
I love about the Chinese Communist Party
is that even after all these years,
it still manages to surprise me.
For decades,
China had the One Child Policy.
It meant most Chinese people
were only allowed to have one child,
or face fines.
Or forced abortion.
China: the only country
that’s officially both Anti-Choice and Anti-Life.
But because of a cultural preference for boys,
this meant a lot of baby girls
were aborted or killed after birth.
So today,
there are more than 30 million more men.
So—will China have 30 million men
going their own way?
Of course not.
That’s because the Chinese Communist Party’s
got their backs.
There’s a variety of solutions,
from forcing oppressed ethnic women to marry them...
to a thriving human trafficking trade
from around the world...
to robot wives.
You know you’ve got a problem when “robot wives”
is the least bad among those three options.
But a Dutch internet expert,
Victor Gevers,
from the non-profit group GDI Foundation,
discovered a new tactic.
He discovered an open database
of 1.8 million women in China.
The average age is 32,
but some are as young as 15.
The database contains a ton of personal information,
“including their phone numbers,
addresses,
and something called “BreedReady” status.
Now BreedReady could just be
a poor translation of some Chinese term.
It could be as innocent as a saying
this woman has children,
or the woman has reached childbearing years.
After all,
the youngest woman with a breed ready status is 18.
But, in the context of China’s birth rates
falling to the lowest level ever…
and the Communist Party’s general habit
of launching large scale top down systems of state control t
o deal with problems,
some people are concerned this is a giant database
of women meant for breeding.
As Foreign Policy says,
“Female bodies have always been treated as state property
that yielded what the country needed.”
90% of the database’s women are single,
and 82% live in Beijing.
Beijing is where all the best Communist officials live.
“The database also included fields labeled “political”
and “hasvideo” as well as links
to what appear to be Facebook profile pages.”
And since Facebook is banned in China,
these girls are very naughty.
It is not clear if the database
is part of some dating app,
a government registry,
or some other organization or company.
However, even if this is completely innocent,
there’s the problem that personal information
about a lot of women,
including full names and addresses,
is accessible in a totally open database.
No wonder China says it’s the biggest victim of hacking.
Though, since the database is totally open,
I’m not sure you could count that as hacking.
Gevers is also the researcher
who discovered authorities in Xinjiang
were tracking an absurd amount of data
about the ethnic Uighur population.
Also, in a totally open, unsecure database.
Now there are a lot of reasons
birth rates are falling in China,
besides the fact that there just
aren’t that many women around.
According to state-run media,
the cost of raising a child is at an all time high.
But China’s population is getting old.
And it’s so big of a problem,
Chinese leaders can’t continue to ignore it.
Which gives you an idea of how bad the situation is.
I mean, you know the Great Famine,
where 30-45 million people died?
Chinese authorities today still call the Great Famine,
the Great Leap Forward.
So yeah, dealing with reality
is not the Communist Party’s strong suit.
The One Child Policy has been replaced
which the slightly more liberal Two Child Policy.
But birth rates are still falling.
So the Party has been pushing for women
to start pushing out babies.
“The popular narrative has gone from
‘delayed motherhood is beneficial for women’s health’
to ‘pregnancy during university
improves employment chances in the future.’
‘Painless abortion’ ads were seamlessly replaced by
‘painless childbirth’ ads.”
As this state-run People’s Daily article says,
“Giving Birth Is Not Only A Family Matter
But Also A National Issue”
That must be why factory owners
were required to monitor their female workers’ menstruation.
Just to be clear, that’s not a joke.
I don’t know why you would think that’s a joke,
but that’s what actually happened.
So it might not be too much of a stretch
to say that someday soon,
women in China will face a new baby quota—
this time not limiting how many children she can have,
but how many she’ll be required to produce for the state
They just got to be breed ready.
So what do you think?
Leave your comments below.
And before you go,
now is the time I answer a question
from a member of the China Uncensored 50-Cent Army—
fans who support the show
with a dollar or more per episode
through the crowd funding website Patreon.
Benjamin Jull asks,
“Has the air pollution in Beijing
improved at all recently?”
Great question!
As I’m sure everyone watching knows,
Beijing has gotten a reputation for bad air.
In fact, crazy bad levels of pollution.
And Beijing isn’t even the worst.
That article mentioned,
that on a scale of 0-500,
Beijing got a 755. In some areas,
it’s even reached 1000.
So the Chinese Communist Party
launched a war on pollution.
Anyone found breathing air
was immediately executed.
But seriously,
I could do a whole episode
on China’s War on Pollution.
But according to a recent study,
Beijing is now no longer among the world’s
100 most polluted cities.
Granted, 57 of world’s 100 most polluted cities
*are* in China.
But Beijing is not among them.
So is China winning the war on pollution?
Maybe not.
Thanks for you question.
If you’d like to hear your question
answered on the show,
sign up to support China Uncensored
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Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell,
see you next time!