Parents tie their children to posts to stop them being stolen

Something is clearly out of kilter. In one class of ten-year-olds, only 20 out of 80 were girls. In another classroom, it was 25 out of 63.

It is possible that some girls were being kept away from school because their parents did not think it worth sending them, but even so, the inequality was enormous and perplexing.

What made it more disturbing was the way teachers accepted there was a mismatch, but refused to talk about how this could have come about. One school principal simply would not discuss the matter. There was a strong sense that I was breaking a taboo by asking.

In a village primary school outside Danzhou, so remote that the staff live behind the school building in a dormitory and keep their own chickens, the gap was not quite so obvious.

But an unusually talkative teacher reckoned that in this small place there was a 60-40 ratio of boys to girls. He laughed and said: 'The state is always taking measures to try to persuade people to have daughters. But the people have their own countermeasures.'

All over this district, the evidence of government concern is on display. A 20-yard-long propaganda poster in one tiny hamlet dwells sternly and very frankly on the problem, declaring: 'Our current family planning policy is this, "Pay attention to the issue of gender imbalance."'

It quotes a recent national census showing a growing imbalance and predicts: 'In 2040 there will be 300million men and 250 million women under 40. At least 30million men will have difficulty getting married.

This will cause "elements of instability" and hinder economic growth. The harm caused by this imbalance could include disintegration of families, high divorce rates, "sex offences" and distortion of the birth rate.'

The poster, astonishingly candid in a country where critical journalism and dissent are still suppressed with all the force of the state, is sadly lame when it comes to suggesting what to do.
It calls for 'action to care for girls' and then sets out four vague and wordy slogans which can be summed up as 'girls are good'. And so they keep saying.

As we travelled around the countryside, it was interesting to see that the traditional Chinese rural propaganda - charmingly naive tiled pictures calling for one-child families, until recently an inescapable feature of the country's rural landscape, often on every corner and at any crossroads - had recently disappeared, or been covered up.

The message remains but it has been altered, although some old slogans, such as 'fewer births, better births', remain.

There are also financial inducements, important to parents who have traditionally seen a big family as the only promise of security in old age.

In one model village, a neat concrete communist idea of what rural life should be like, with its own clinic and school, there is a poster advertising benefits of £8 per month and easier access to good schools for parents who stick to one child, as well as large compensation payments by Chinese standards (around £5,000) if an only child dies.

But a painted slogan also discourages the abortion of unborn girls that everyone knows is going on despite laws which - in theory - ban the use of scans to check the sex of the child, and punish selective abortions.

In red lettering on the village hall are the optimistic words: 'Boy or Girl? Let Nature decide.' And huge new billboards stand at key points throughout the district.

They show idealised young families: a single daughter accompanies her parents, her arms affectionately outstretched amid fields of flowers. And they carry such slogans as 'Caring for girls is caring for the future of our nation!' or 'Times have changed! Boys and girls are the same!' and 'Boys and girls are both treasures'.

In a scruffy roadside cafe next to one of these giant placards a farmer from a rubber plantation muttered mutinously: 'That's all very well, but they're not the same really, and you want to be sure what it is before you have it, if you only have one child.'