China's strict population control policy, which limits families to one child, may have the side effect of worsening the imbalance, because if peasant families can have only one child, they want it to be a boy who can do heavy labor in the fields. After the Communist takeover of China in 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong outlawed the practice of wife-selling, and it remains illegal today. But Deng Xiaoping's reforms in the 1980s opened the country to both the freedoms and the harsh realities of a market economy. Millions of villagers began migrating to cities to seek their fortune. Women, especially, left home to marry into wealthier areas, while men stayed behind, tied to the land that they own.
Dowries cost more.
In the railroad station of the bustling southern metropolis of Guangzhou, peasant girls stream off trains from rural provinces, cheap denim backpacks slung over their thin shoulders. On the plaza outside, migrant laborers huddle together on newspaper blankets, waiting for their luck to arrive, and sly-eyed pickpockets slink through the crowds. Lin Xue, a clerk at a university publishing house in the city, stands to one side of the square, wincing from a painful memory. Looking at this plain, modestly dressed woman, hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, it is hard to believe that four years ago she was abducted from this site to be sold into matrimonial slavery. Allowed outside only to use the bathroom, a desperate Lin appealed for help to a peasant collecting outhouse waste for fertilizer.