China blames Internet for rise in teen pregnancies

Nearly half of the pregnant teens in China's financial hub met their partners on the Internet, state media reports.

The story "China blames Internet for rise in teen pregnancies" published July 9, 2007 at 9:25 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from Reuters expires after 30 days.

[TheJae]

Conservative Culture

Chinese being a very conservative race doesn't teach much about sex and sexually transmitted diseases. And now this is what happens when internet brings freedom when the knowledge to comprehend this freedom is still limited.

[Stating]

Always Blaming The West

I would guess that China's youth problems stem from their parents leaving the kids unsupervised as they slave away, working long hours, in city factories. This wasn't an issue when most Chinese lived and worked in rural areas with the kids close by their side. <br /><br />For China to blame the West for their youth problem is a convenient excuse. It would be like blaming the fall of the Berlin wall on the Beatles and blue jeans. Remember the fixation on American blue jeans that ossified Soviet leaders like Brezhnev had? Bootleg jeans sold for like $300 -- ah the good old days. Nowdays in Russia bluejeans sell for a few bucks and Stalinist leaders like Putin are back in power. I suppose as China ecounters more social unrest they will continue to scapegoat the West too.

[aaydogan]

First world aspirations, third world reality

The Chinese "leaders" are ignorant, pretentious, xenophobic thugs <br />whose aim in life is to amass fortune and power at the expense of <br />everyone else in the country. To cite what they say is not news. It <br />only helps to legitimize a brutal dictatorship that has become a <br />plague on the rest of humanity. The West should do everything it <br />can to help liberate the Chinese people from their enslavement at <br />the hands of the Communit Party of China instead of colluding with <br />them like Cisco, Yahoo and Google!

[p.shearer]

not much of a student of history, are you?

China has been on the path of market reforms for over twenty years now. The freedoms and opportunities available to the average Chinese citizen today were impossible just a few years before. There are two paths that can be followed here: the slow path of reform and rule of law, or revolution and anarchy. I hope for their sakes that the China continues down the path that is on.

[wildchild_plasma_gyro]

Nice try China

Hears a tip when a bunch of CIA idiots decide your human eco balance should be destroyed by 1 child rules, look for a plan B where communities locally regulate the ecology.<br />As for the rest of especially that huge number of californians, plan B does not entail waiting for the next quake and shuving the exsses down the cracks.

[xjlyz_ca]

Nay

Actually, Chinese's conservativeness on this is very discussible. We're actually very multiculture in many things including this one. Yes, many people are very conservative about it, but many other people are not.<br /><br />Both government established and private brothels exists in big cities since more than two thousand years ago and all through Chinese history until the rise of Republic of China in 1911, in which many top officals are heavily affected by Catholic (or are Catholic themselves) and start banning brothels all over the country.<br /><br />That said, conservativeness doesn't equal to knowledgeless. It is the communist's fault of creating a "anti-tradition" believe in cultural revolution and not establishing a good education system.<br /><br />When the "tradition is always old and bad" thought is in action, some teens loose up all their ethical constraints and become very open in this. At the same time, their knowledge in this matter is worse than many Chinese in traditional time because the traditional way of how this knowledge flow in is destroyed and no new ways are established.

[xjlyz_ca]

Sorry, this should be a reply to "Conservative Culture"

Sorry, this should be a reply to "Conservative Culture". Accidentally responsed to the "story"

[ralahinn1]

Last time I looked you didn't need a computer to make a baby

0_o It is not the fault of the internet that more teens have babies, its the fault of the teens involved and there parents. Before there was an internet, before there was electricity, teens were running around having sex...this is nothing new. There are a group of people out there though who don't feel happy unless they can take away or blame something, except for the thing that truely is causing the problems.They should get on the problems, and not keep making phony excuses.