1	China, wives, wedding

As many as 24 million eligible bachelors in China may never be able to marry because of a lack of women in the country.

New stats from the State-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences show there has been no let up in China’s 20-year-old gender imbalance.

Authorities say the normal male-female ratio is between 103-107 males for every 100 females. But the latest figures show that in 2005, there were 119 boys for every 100 girls in China. The study said that in some areas the ratio was as high as 130-100.

The study pointed to sex-specific abortions as a major factor in the skewed population of 1.3 billion, where a cultural preference for male children persists.

While noting that there were complex factors involved, the study said that “sex-specific abortions remained extremely commonplace, especially in rural areas”.

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