A lot of this is the result of historical policies and culture. It doesn't necessarily excuse poor behavior, but there's enough of that to go around on all sides that we eventually learn not to point fingers.

It is culturally expected of the man to take care of his parents and grandparents. It's a very gendered role, so a daughter might not accept that responsibility. Typically the son's loyalty is expected to go to his own parents, while the daughters loyalty would transfer to her husband's family. But sometimes when she got married her husband would accept responsibility for her parents as well. But that places a significant burden on the man. It wasn't that big of a deal with multiple children - you could split up the parents and grandparents. But with one child, you now have to hope that one can take care of six adults and a spouse. It's described as the 4-2-1 problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#.22Four-two-o...).

There was an article on modern Chinese women not wanting to support their parents that I encountered a while back (though I think it was older), but I'm having problems finding it. This might change, though, as new legislation surfaced recently making it a legal burden for all children (http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/chinese-laws-requ...). This should help alleviate a lot of retirement care concerns.

Some rural areas have policies where new children are greeted with extra land. This was returned to the government upon marriage for girls, while it stayed with the family for boys. Ostensibly this was to prevent the land from going to some city dweller. It's a policy littered with faulty assumptions, but that extra acre of land could be pretty tempting to a rural villager. (http://research-china.blogspot.com/2005/10/why-girls-are-aba...). Outdated ownership and inheritance policies are another cause for concern.

With the relaxing of the one-child policy, things got a lot better. (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/07/as-china-s-...) Note that some parents are aborting boys for girls, now. But we can see that a lot (but not all) of the parents concern over the gender of their child can come from government policies and wanting a place to live in their declining years. Let's not try to force our own paradigms and logic on other cultures just because it's convenient. I'm not Chinese, but I still get frustrated when people judge their worth without considering Chinese values and cultural expectations. It's a lot more complex than an entire country hating women. Selfishness is a much more reasonable assumption. Assuming it's selfish to want your kids to take care of you when you took care of your parents and grandparents. I'd say it's more like perpetuating the cultural machine.

We've also completely ignored the historical relevance of China's bride price (http://qz.com/92267/in-a-reversal-of-the-dowry-chinese-men-p... and http://www.npr.org/2013/04/23/176326713/for-chinese-women-ma...). Surely the fact that it's been culturally expected to pay your wife's parents to be eligible for marriage has influence somewhere. Notably, a son (and thus continuing financial support) was still considered more desirable than a one-time payment. A daughter might make you rich, but a son would make sure you always had a place to live. Because if he didn't, society would make life very difficult for him.

Perhaps this would all be a bit better if parents weren't planning their children's lives (from their careers and educations down to their sex) based on their own wants and needs. But being old doesn't really make you wise.