Forced castration of boys in China during the 1970s?

[T van Keel (imported)]

Hello,

here's something I would like to know if it can be true. Maybe Jesus can bring some light to it.

Someone told me he knows a chinese person who is said to be forcedly castrated as a 10 yo boy. If it's true, the castration must have been performend approx. in the early 1970s in a rural area of China. The reason for the castration was that a family there was only allowed to have two boys, each other boy born after the first two had to be castrated when reaching the age of 10.

Has that really happened, is there any hint that this story is true? Was castration of young boys really a method of birth control in China?

Later on aged 16 that boy had his penis voluntarily removed, too, and is said to be a happy nullo. He is now about 55 yo, about 1.7 to 1.75 m tall and looks supposedly like a slim male 14 yo teenager with no trace of eunuchism - that makes me wonder, as he never had any HRT and was castrated before puberty. Can someone with that history really look like that?

I don't know if this is the right section here, so if my question doesn't fit here, please move it.

[paring (imported)]

A few years(2-3) ago, I was chatting here with a (supposed) chinese mother who was telling me that, school was promoting castration. She asked me if she should allow then to castrate her son. I found it really weird, I thought she was pulling my legs. Now that you mention that, I wonder if this was for real. I had discourage her to get him castrated and that castration desires must come from the boy him self, in order to be acceptable for him. I'm against neonatal and infants circumcision, I would certainly not encourage parents to get their son castrated. I've never heard of her there after. I wonder if anyone else here has chatted with her. Perhaps Jesus knows something about it.

[Yman (imported)]

Well, as you said "

Someone told me he knows a chinese person ...

", you should try get more information from your primary source. Even if someone told you, that at some time in the 70s there had been some castrations, that wouldn´t proof or rebut the story.

[Dave (imported)]

There's been a recent series of articles about the "single child" population control edict in China years ago.

Look up an editorial titled: ‘China’s Worst Policy Mistake’? by Nicholas D. Kristof

I don't remember in any that I read that boy babies were castrated. I do know that girl babies were sent to orphanages as punishment and then channeled into the USA and other parts of the world for adoption.

I also don't remember any mention of grown men (the fathers) being punished with castration. however, the Mothers could be punished by forced sterilization.

There's two books listed in the article by Nicholas Kristof. I don't have time to read them as I have a stack of books already on the "to read" pile.

[JesusA (imported)]

While I can find no evidence that boys were castrated in 1970s (or later) China for either population control or eugenics reasons, there have been compulsory vasectomies at a relatively young age. There may have been some castrations, but I can find no evidence of them.

In 1988 the Chinese government instituted a policy for the compulsory sterilization of all males in the province of Gansu who were judged "mentally retarded." All pregnancies of "mentally retarded" women were to be terminated by abortion. In 1993 the Chinese government passed the Eugenics and Health Protection Law, prohibiting the marriage of people with mental illness, venereal disease or hepatitis. In 1994, the sterilization law that previously affected only Gansu Province was extended nationwide and expanded to include the sterilization of both males and females judged to be "mentally retarded," or who had "serious genetic diseases." [I could find no clear statement of how the Chinese government defined "mental retardation" or "serious genetic disease."]

I would be very much interested in any information that might be found about castration in China after 1910. Sun Yaoting, the last surviving Chinese court eunuch had been castrated in 1908.

[paring (imported)]

Dave, the law has changed lately. They are now allowed to have 2 children. I wouldn't be surprised if such castration encouragement existed few years ago. Perhaps this program was kept secret by the chinese government not to get blamed by the rest of the world. The chinese one child policy was drastically enforced, mother and father could lose their job and many child, mostly girl, were drawn to avoid retaliation from the government or to eventually allow the mother to carry a baby boy.

[Dave (imported)]

Yes.

China under Mao Zedong set off on a grand eugenics experiment and a rather ugly way to end its population bomb. Thankfully, they have ended that policy. Nicholas Kristof's article reports on two books. I only was able to read his article. It discusses how the authorities accomplished the policy.

I knew a few Chinese nationals in the 1980's but I never spoke with them about the policy. We did ask if they had families to be polite because we all had pictures around the office. That was just being polite. I think in the several years that they were at my place of work (a work exchange program) that I only spoke politics once and never again.

[colin (imported)]

As I recall there was a brief flurry of protest about castrations carried out after the Chinese invaded Tibet.

I do not recall that the age of those castrated or the reason why they were chosen was mentioned. Nor, do I know if this was true or not.

C.

[Paolo]

I found one source on Google Books mentioning it, but no ages:

https://books.google.com/books?id=1RBeC ... INDAE#v=on epage&q=china%20invaded%20tibet%20castration&f=false

Page 326, "public castrations"

[GenChick (imported)]

Forced Sterilizations In Occupied Tibet

http://www.wikileaks-forum.com/tibet/30 ... bet/18002/