Chinese people hate girls, right? Like much of the conventional wisdom about China and its one-child policy — including the notion that it limited most families to one offspring — it’s just plain wrong.
Kay Ann Johnson, author of China’s Hidden Children, has spent decades interviewing rural people, trying to counter the western misconception that they are misogynistic. Her book chronicles case after case in which peasants risked life, limb and prosperity for the priceless gift of keeping a girl in the family.
The infamous one-child policy, abolished last year, often made that tough to achieve. Since a son was seen as the Chinese equivalent of an old age pension, most rural people could legally try twice for a boy: if they made it the first time, they had to stop there. If they had a girl first, they could try once more for a boy. But if that second or third child was also female, those girls were in a very precarious position. Conventional wisdom is that many were blithely discarded or worse.