Last week, pro-abortion Vice President Joe Biden faced significant criticism for failing to criticize the forced abortions and other human rights abuses associated with the one-child policy in China.
Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and ambassador to China who is seeking the Republican nomination, was one of those detractors.
“As an adoptive father, whose daughter was abandoned by her parents in China, Governor Huntsman is intimately familiar with the impact of China’s “one-child” policy,” Huntsman campaign spokesman Tim Miller told LifeNews. “As someone who is firmly pro-life, he feels the policy runs counter to the fundamental value of human life and is heartbroken by the destructive nature of the policy that has cost millions of lives.”
Now, a newly released document from Wikileaks shows Huntsman warned about problems associated with the one-child policy in January 2010, when he wrote to Washington from Beijing and complained about 30 million “unmarriageable” Chinese men, sex trafficking, and demographic and economic troubles the policy is causing for China.
“Abnormally high sex ratio at birth and excess female child mortality both contribute directly to the sex ratio imbalance in China,” Huntsman wrote, according to a report in The Cable. “Social consequences of this imbalance include an estimated excess of over 30 million unmarriageable males, a potentially destabilizing force that threatens to cause unrest in the most economically marginalized areas, and could lead to increased gender violence through demand for prostitution and trafficking in girls and women.”
Huntsman said there is agreement by Chinese officials that the one-child policy has created the “abnormally high sex ratio” via sex-selection abortions and that “excess female mortality” is caused by the killing of girls in infanticides shortly after both. Both problems, he said, are due to the “interaction of a strong cultural preference and pressure for sons with China’s strict birth limitation policy.”
Huntsman talked about the “bare branches” the one-child policy has created — a subclass of mostly poor and lower-educated men who don’t have the money to offer the fewer women available in the dating pool. As a result, these men have turned to crime, prostitution, sexual rape and abuse, and going as far as buying women.
“Increased demand for sex workers and shortage of women to marry could lead to more trafficking of girls and women for future brides or the sex industry,” the cable Huntsman wrote said, according to the report, and he complained that, while China has identified the problem, Chinese officials have yet to do much to combat it such as prohibiting sex-selection abortions.
“Not only was he advocating behind the scenes, but he publicly spoke out on behalf of dissidents and human rights, even in his farewell speech,” one Huntsman advisor said. “Given the vice president’s recent comments on the one-child policy, it’s clear the Obama administration is incapable of leading on this issue — something Ambassador Huntsman is unquestionably prepared to do.”
Huntsman campaign spokesman Tim Miller told The Cable that the diplomatic document proves Huntsman was doing what he could as ambassador to China to shine the spotlight on the problems.
“One-child runs counter to the fundamental value of human life and has myriad other negative consequences including an increase in sex trafficking and prostitution, as well as a destabilization of the family unit,” Miller said.
