Beijing has pledged to crack down heavily on sex-selective abortions in an effort to balance the nation's skewed sex-ratio at birth.
An eight-month crackdown, involving six ministries including the ministries of health, public security and the National Population and Family Planning Commission, is intended to help achieve 'a significant rebalancing of the sex ratio at birth by 2015'.
'Using ultrasonic techniques to conduct non-medical sex determination and selective sex abortion is the primary reason for the imbalanced sex ratio,' commission director Li Bin told a national conference on the crackdown.
The natural sex ratio should be 103 to 107 boys per 100 girls at birth, but the gap widened on the mainland after the one-child policy was introduced three decades ago to curb population growth.
While rural and ethnic minority people are able to have more, most urban couples are allowed to have only one child.
Parents use every means possible to ensure that their only child is a boy because of the traditional cultural preference for a male heir.
A slew of measures have been taken to address the problem, including improving social security for rural families who have only girls and cracking down on sex-selective abortions.