Corporeal Bordering

Perhaps the most notable example of corporeal bordering from the Asia-Pacific region can be found in China, where stringent family planning policies have led families to hide their girls by not registering their birth. In 2013 the CRC lamented that the country’s family-planning policies on birth registration significantly deterred parents from registering their girl children.

As it turns out, the story of China’s “missing girls” due to its single child policy (1979-2015) cannot be attributed solely to foeticide, infanticide, and abandonment of baby girls at orphanages—it is also a story of administratively hiding their existence from the Chinese public security apparatus. The existence of millions of girls was concealed from government officials and the national census by local officials and rural families—the former because opportunities for advancement were tied to their enforcement of family planning rules, and the latter because having larger families increased labour and income. In addition to this collusion, girls (or unauthorized births more generally) also go missing from birth records due to the administrative impossibility of registering unauthorized births.

Registration in China’s Hukou (or household registration system) required that parents present birth permission from the family planning department, in addition to the hospital birth notification, and the parents’ Hukou booklets (from the public security department). This means that unauthorized births—those outside the family planning policy—could not be registered, at least not without paying a heavy fine.

The fine which Beijing used to impose for registering an out-of-plan child could be three to ten times the per capita annual income, according to testimony from Li Xue’s family. Only in 2021 did the government of China eliminate fines and shift the policy to allow families to have up to three children. The millions of girls whose births were hidden from the government are now young women without Hukou, and very well could form part of China’s “floating population” of migrant workers.