The Missing Girls and Women of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan

In the past century, tens of millions of women and girls have disappeared in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. There are many reasons: the women variously were sold as “foreign spouses”; imprisoned for their political beliefs; taken to night clubs or massage parlors to work as “escorts”; provided as “comfort women” to soldiers; or murdered by female corpse dealers and sold as “ghost brides” to families looking to give their deceased sons wives in the afterlife. The youngest girls fell victim to infanticide, the tragic result of a “one child” law in a male-dominated society. As a result of the gender imbalance these disappearances created, countless young males now suffer from the “marriage squeeze,” remaining single without families of their own. This sociological study explores the institutional factors, develops a typology for these populations, and lays a foundation for the examination of lost populations in the future.

Hua-Lun Huang is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Child and Family Studies at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette. His writings focus on East Asian gangs/pirates, Chinese secret societies, delinquent cults and trafficking in women.

Hua-Lun Huang

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 242
Bibliographic Info: 8 photos, 9 tables, map, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2012
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4029-0
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8834-6
Imprint: McFarland

Tables and Figures      viii
Preface      1
Introduction      3

PART I. THE STUDY OF MISSING FEMALES
1. Conceptualization of Missing Females: A Classification System      15

PART II. MISSING FEMALES DEAD OR AT HIGH RISK
2. Female Political Prisoners      21
3. Slain Baby Girls      71
4. Ghost Brides      100

PART III. MISSING FEMALES WITH SOME CHANCES TO RE-EMERGE
5. Comfort Women      123
6. Trafficked Women and Girls      143
7. Runaways/Thrownaways      174

Conclusion      193
Notes      196
Bibliography      213
Index      228

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