The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Researchers may have ‘found’ many of China’s 30 million missing girls

November 30, 2016 at 8:39 a.m. EST
A woman holds a baby as she walks along a road in Tangshan, in northern China's Hebei province on November 15, 2013. AFP PHOTO / WANG ZHAOWANG ZHAO/AFP/Getty Images

Academics often talk about between 30 and 60 million “missing girls” in China, apparently killed in the womb or just after birth, thanks to a combination of preference for sons and the country’s decades under a repressive one-child policy.

Now researchers in the United States and China think they might have found many — or even most — of them, and argue they might not have been killed after all.