Hong Kong at centre of illegal China gender check

Hong Kong at centre of illegal China gender check

AFP . Hongkong |
Update: 13:01, May 22, 2019
        

Shady middle-men are brazenly advertising on Chinese social media to import blood samples of pregnant ladies to urban center to skirt the mainland's ban on gender testing, AN AFP investigation has found.

The business thrives on a well-organised underground network that serves the massive demand for illicit sex-selective abortion in People's Republic of China -- driven by limits on family size ANd an entrenched cultural preference for sons.

Chinese authorities vowed to trammel on the exchange 2015.

But dozens of blood importing agents are brazenly advertising services on the Twitter-like platform Weibo and on websites, despite China's tested ability to wash digital content.

Gender testing -- except on medical grounds -- is outlaw in China, wherever sex-selective abortions have helped produce a surplus of regarding thirty one.6 million men, with some a hundred and fifteen boys born for each a hundred ladies last year.

A long-standing one-child policy was alleviated to allow 2 youngsters in 2016 however gender testing continues, with several folks of daughters attempting for a son the second time around.

Gender testing is legal in urban center, with some clinics apparently turning a blind eye to the origins of the bootleg samples.

Three agents contacted by AN AFP newsman movement as a client offered to rearrange in-person appointments with medical testing labs or transport blood samples to urban center for around US$580, promising results ranging from six weeks into maternity.

Upon payment of a deposit, the agent sends a testing kit to the consumer through a delivery service. One suggested victimization AN app to rent a nurse World Health Organization may come back to the patient's place People's Republic of China to extract blood.

Nothing can get it wrong
The consumer sends the blood sample to Shenzhen from wherever it's bootleg across the border to urban center. The agents failed to directly address questions about however the samples would be transported, however assured the newsman they'd arrive safely at their destination.

"They are going to be taken to the research laboratory in an exceedingly selected vehicle, the samples are often safely sent over for testing, nothing can get it wrong," one representative aforementioned, adding that results would be sent go in one operating day.

Other agents use human smugglers. In Gregorian calendar month, a 12-year-old woman headed to urban center was caught at the Shenzhen border carrying 142 vials of blood samples from pregnant ladies in her backpack.

The tests analyse little fragments of fetal deoxyribonucleic acid in an exceedingly pregnant woman's blood and may notice the presence of a Y chromosome. they're conjointly accustomed screen for body disorders like Down's syndrome.

They will typically accurately predict the gender of a craniate weeks before doctors can see the sex organs in an ultrasound.

Some mainlanders take the legal choice of move on to urban center for gender testing.

"I have 3 daughters already. To be honest i need a son," a 39-year-old man surnamed Wang told AFP outside a research laboratory in Kowloon wherever his adult female was obtaining her blood tested.

Wang, World Health Organization circumvented the one-child policy as several socially connected or flush Chinese families do, aforementioned he was below intense parental pressure to supply a male heir and had created the journey from the southern province of Guizhou.

"Chinese folks still need to own a son to hold on the ancestral line, this is often AN archaic approach of thinking, however back home there are plenty of folks that assume this manner," he explained.

He extra he and his adult female would terminate the maternity in China if it clothed be a woman.

"Right currently she's solely regarding fifty days on, thus it are often solved by taking some medication," he aforementioned.

Ethically unacceptable
The trade raises queries over the temperament of urban center labs to ignore their own rules. per trade pointers, laboratory technicians mustn't check blood while not a patient referral from a neighborhood doctor, and risk losing their licence if they are doing.

It is black-market to mail or transport blood samples out of China while not a allow, however urban center solely outlaws commercialism blood samples if someone has reason to suspect that it contains AN infective agent.

The city's Department of Health told AFP the amount of cases it investigated each year has tripled since 2016 however none was prosecuted because of insufficient proof.

A research laboratory that one agent claimed to be operating with told AFP it doesn't perform tests on couriered samples and denied working with earth middle-men.

Multiple Chinese government departments failed to reply to requests for comment.

Hong Kong lawgiver Kwok Ka-ki, World Health Organization is additionally a doctor, known as on the territory's government to figure with earth authorities to require down the networks.

"Ethically this is often fully unacceptable as a result of this can solely encourage a lot of folks to perform gender choice," he told AFP.

"And in People's Republic of China, gender choice has already light-emitting diode to several tragedies and a inclined population with a lot of males than females -- they're all directly affected, thus however will we have a tendency to abide this?"