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THE UNDERGROUND JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH SPRING 2014
154 males to every 100 females (21). Coale’s and Banister’s demographic study suggests large excess female morality for Chinese born in the ‘30s and ‘40s due to persistent female infanticide (476). They noted that the “missing” statistic of females decreased as this practice waned, but the resurgence in the late ‘80s could indicate sex-selective abortion (477). This evidence adds a historical aspect to concerns on the current sex ratio [see Fig. 2]. Athough “traditional reproductive culture” and son preference are fundamental causes for the lack of girls in China, the restrictive birth policy is an important exacerbating factor (Greenhalgh 872 and Hesketh 10). Orientalism and Western, Human Rights Perspectives China’s one-child policy has faced immense critique from human rights advocates, scholars, reporters and the media. In 1983, the China correspondent for the London Observer opened an article with, “the murder of female babies by ancient Chinese methods of family planning—drowning, exposure, mutiliation—has been revived as a direct result of a birth control law passed in 1979…” (Mirksy 12). He claims that Mao Zedong “deserves much of the blame for this great demographic leap” resulting in this “draconian birth control law” (Mirsky 13). From a Western perspective, the sentiment has barely changed nearly three decades later. At the 2007 World Economic Forum, demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, with support from the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, called China’s one-child policy “a slow-motion humanitarian tragedy” (Pascu 108). These attitudes and commentary, whether considered logical or righteous, certainly qualify as orientalist. Said defines orientalism in several ways, including “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’” (2). The term is somewhat outdated as it references Victorian era colonialism, but in this case it is entirely relevant to the European travelogues analyzed earlier. Said states that “literature and culture cannot be presumed as politically or historically innocent” (27). Many of the ‘facts’ in history textbooks and literary representations of the indigenous ‘Other’ are the products of hegemonic values—i.e., those of white, European males. Jacques Derrida makes an assertion of ridicule, but fascination, of ‘utopian’ China:
The concept of Chinese writing thus functioned as a sort of European hallucination. … This functioning obeyed a rigorous necessity … It was not disturbed by the knowledge of Chinese script... which was then available. … A “hieroglyphist prejudice” had produced the same effect of interested blindness. Far from proceeding … ethnocentric scorn, the occultation takes the form of an hyperbolical admiration […] (qtd. in Spivak 88) Furthermore, when Western subjects search for a “philosophy of truth”, indigenous people, nonwhites and women become objects of study (Yegenoglu 550). Several theorists agree that this has resulted in problematic dichotomies and a linear regard of time and development. The “simplistic binarism … and its ignorance in relation to the devastating rhetoric of ‘us and them’” supports a “patriarchal ideology that assumes that the other at the low side of the hierarchy of self/ other is ‘lacking’” (Suleri 244 and Chow 328). It is clear that the majority outside of China subjectively view the one-child policy and its followers as “backwards, marginalized and depressed” others (Chow 327). According to Amnesty International, “a women’s right to control her body, including her sexuality and reproduction, is a basic human right” (“Stop violence against women” 27). Western scholars have criticized China’s one-child policy because it restricts reproductive rights and abuses against women, especially in the countryside (Deutsch 385). Hemminki et al. maintain that certain policy tools, such as coercion and forced abortions, were rare but had questionable morality (5). Yet in 2003, a Chinese woman sought asylum in the U.S. after government plans for her forced sterilization (“Stop violence against women” 27). The 2008 Human Rights Watch report on China also indicated continued problems of violence towards women, stating: Gender-based discrimination and violence remain entrenched problems in China … Strong son preference contributes to sexselective abortions, differential care of girls leading to significantly higher rates of female infant mortality, and in extreme cases female infanticide or sale to human traffickers. (“China Events of 2007”) It is plausible that Western scholars will not find China’s one-child policy reasonable from an individualistic perspective where women have greater