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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Suicide attack at Chinese wedding |
| 2006-06-06 |
 A man strapped with explosives has blown himself up at his ex-wife's wedding in China, killing himself and eight other people, reports say. Lu Wenfeng detonated the bomb at a ceremony in Heilongjiang province "out of resentment for his ex-wife", the official Xinhua news agency said. At least five people were hurt in the attack. The fate of Mr Lu's ex-wife and the man she was marrying is not known. Mr Lu was married to Li Jinling for five years between 2000 and 2005. |
| Posted by:DanNY |
| #5 john: What about the societal preference for males (that also is severe in South Korea and in India)? I think the problem of societal disincentives is not as bad in China - because of the institution of a bride price. In India, the bride has to bring with her a dowry from her family to present to the groom's family - i.e. the bride's family not only has to bring her up; it's got to pay a substantial sum for her to be married off. In China, the groom has to present a bride price to the bride's parents - i.e. the groom's family has to pay a substantial sum to the bride's parents in order to get the bride's hand in marriage, meaning that the bride's family gets back a part of the cost of bringing her up. In China, as potential brides become scarcer, bride prices should skyrocket. I have read that dowries in India are plummeting. Interestingly enough, even in two nominally socialist countries, markets are reducing the disincentives for having daughters. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-06-06 20:55 |
| #4 Is it correct that this is more an urban phenomenon ? I've read that in the major cities like Shanghai, this rule is just ignored by the uppler classes. But with greater CCP control in the rural areas, the gender imbalance is greater here. What about the societal preference for males (that also is severe in South Korea and in India)? |
| Posted by: john 2006-06-06 20:12 |
| #3 The other thing you have to understand is that people with more than one child tend not to report that fact to the census. There is a penalty of $13,000 per child for every child in excess of one. As a result, even though the official figures indicate a sex imbalance, the reality could be quite different. I personally know of several Chinese who have had more than one child in recent years, some of them surreptitiously. It's not easy to track the number of children in a family. As long as Chinese society was organized around paid government-employed snitches, it was possible to keep a close eye on those numbers. Today the number of secret police is way down, thanks to the government's shift in priorities, and there's so much more geographical mobility that I would say the one-child policy is a dead letter, since it's almost impossible to enforce. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-06-06 18:45 |
| #2 DanNY: This lack of chicks thing in China seems to be getting critical. It's not really an issue yet. The one-child program was promulgated in the late 70's, and really started getting enforced in the mid-80's. The net result is that the sex differential is only starting to hit 20 year olds right around now. But the typical Chinese gets married around age 25. The one-child generation hits that age around 2010. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-06-06 18:37 |
| #1 This lack of chicks thing in China seems to be getting critical. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-06-06 12:56 |