Congressman Chris Smith, chairman of the House panel that oversees global human rights, held a bipartisan press conference today, June 1—officially Children’s Day in China—on the gender imbalance in China brought about by the government's brutally enforced one-child policy and its impact on trade and national security.

    Amnesty International, All Girls Allowed, and demographers from the American Enterprize Institute and Texas A&M University spoke of the alarming lack of girls in the young generation of Chinese. In some areas of China only 100 girls are allowed to be born for every 170 boys. Tens of millions of Chinese men will be unable to find wives. The impact of gender selection in India was also discussed, as was the sex trafficking and child-bride trafficking associated with gender imbalance.

    "Since 1979—the year the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Chinese Government launched the one child per couple policy, which makes sisters and brothers illegal—gendercide in China has exploded," said Smith, a senior member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. "Gendercide has led to other predictable consequences including and especially sex trafficking." Click here to read Smith's statement.

    Smith,  who is the co-chairman of the Congressional Human Trafficking Caucus, was joined by Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18), Vicky Hartzler (MO-04) and Joe Pitts (PA-16), and Frank Wolf (VA-10).

    "Several of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle are here today to show our bi-partisan concern about this critical issue," Smith said. "As I often say – partisan politics have no place in the defense of fundamental human rights, and our joint efforts are an affirmation of that principle."