It's a scene that's been repeated countless times across China over the past 25 years since adoption of the nation's controversial "one-child" policy.

But it's really an ancient story rooted in Chinese culture and economic realities.

For many centuries China had been plagued by periodic famines and starvation. Usually, this resulted from poor weather or floods, but in 1959 and 1960, millions of Chinese also starved to death when an attempt by Mao Tse-tung to collectivize farms went awry. Private farm ownership was eliminated, and farm families were forced into thousands of communes.

It was a tragic failure.

But the repeated shortages of food were also worsened by two simple facts: In China, about 22 percent of the world's people live on 7 percent of the world's arable land.

In the late 1970s, Chinese leaders realized that with such a high fertility rate (the average Chinese woman was bearing about six children in her lifetime), the country's population could quickly - and catastrophically - outstrip its ability to produce food.

So, in 1979, Chinese leadership embarked on an ambitious program of economic growth and birth control.

And, they have succeeded on both fronts. China's fertility rate is now about 1.7 children per woman, and its economy has been the fastest growing in the world.

The Chinese government estimates that its policies have prevented 250 to 300 million births.

But, the one-child policy is also tragically flawed.

In Chinese culture, a male heir is expected to support his parents, while a female, when she marries, becomes part of her new husband's family.

In a society without a Social Security safety net or a strong pension system, obtaining a male heir is a form of retirement planning. Without a son, an elderly Chinese couple may be left without a means of supporting themselves.

Despite its name, the one-child policy is really a complicated patchwork of rules and regulations applied with varying degrees of enthusiasm at different times and in different parts of the country.

Urban residents and government employees are closely monitored, and usually only allowed one child. However, in some areas, if a couple's first child is a girl, they are allowed to have a second child.

In other, sparsely populated areas, couples may be allowed two or even three children, or wealthy parents may simply be able to pay the fines that result from having more than one child, which can be two or three times a poor family's annual income.

The restrictive and often unfair birth-control laws have recently led to sporadic riots of citizens angered by the uneven application of the rules.

Still, poor parents who feel they need a male heir often end up with a girl baby, which they feel compelled to abandon in order to try again for a boy. Often the baby is abandoned with a great deal of pain, regret and resentment.

It is a crime to abandon a child in China, although parents are rarely caught or prosecuted for doing so.

As a result, some sources estimate that 70 to 80 percent of China's orphans are girls. Most often, the only boys who end up in the orphanage system are disabled.

As a result of this oversupply of orphan girls, nearly all of the Chinese children adopted in the U.S. and other countries are girls.

China does not provide the number of children living in orphanages, according to Beth Nonte Russell, who is co-founder of a foundation dedicated to reducing child abandonment worldwide.

Estimates found on the Web vary wildly, from 1 million to 15 million.

The one-child policy has had a secondary serious consequence: China has a growing gap between the number of men and women.

International Planned Parenthood estimates there are about 7 million abortions in China each year, 70 percent of which are performed to end pregnancies that will result in the birth of a girl. Also, abandonment and orphanage care result in the premature deaths of more girls than boys.

Demographers now believe China will be "missing" 60 million females by the end of the decade.

China's 2000 census found 117 boys per 100 girls under the age of five, and this gap is expected to widen over time, resulting in practical social problems that can only be imagined.

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