BEIJING, Aug. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- A senior Chinese official Wednesday acknowledged that the existence of imbalance sex ratio at birth in China has nothing to do with China's family planning policy.

    "The normal sex ratio at birth should be in the range between 100:103 and 100:107, but the ratio has reached 100:119.86 in China," said Gu Xiulian, Vice-Chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), said at a news conference held by the Information Office of the State Council.

    This means there are 119.86 of male babies for every 100 female babies born.

    Gu, who is also Chairwoman of the All-China Women's Federation,owed the imbalance to three major factors: deep-rooted conventional ideas among people in China that males are superior to females, the lack of a sound social security system in the rural areas and the availability of modern technology to identify the sex of fetus.

    "To my knowledge, the existence of imbalanced ratio at birth is not unique to China, but is also reported in some other countries that are not practicing family planning," said Gu. "Therefore, I should say the phenomenon has nothing to do with our family planning policy."

    Gu said the imbalance reflects inequality of men and women and it constitutes an infringement upon the right to existence and development of females.

    According to Gu, the Chinese government has taken a series of measures to address the imbalance, including fostering the awareness about equality of men and women, establishing and improving the social security system, stepping up crackdown on illegal identification of the sex of fetus and directing more social care to girls. Enditem