To reduce the big gap between the number of males and females in China, Beijing has banned Chinese parents from having the gender of their forthcoming baby known ahead of the birth.

Since sons are preferred in China, upon learning that the fetus is a girl, many Chinese couples abort it, resulting in lopsided gender imbalance in favor of males. It reached a peak in 2004 when there were 121.2 boys born for every 100 girls, reports the Wall Street Journal.

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China had a headcount of 1.36 billion in 2014, broken down into 700 million males and 667 million females. That means there are 33 million more males than females in the Asian giant, reports Ucanews.

This made searching for a bride difficult for Chinese males once they reach early adulthood.

To reduce the gap, China made gender testing illegal in 2001, which resulted in an improvement in the numbers to 117.6 male child born for every 100 female in 2013, according to data from the National Health and Family Planning Commission. In 2014, it further improved to 115.88 boys for every 100 girls.

In contrast, global average is 103 to 107 boys for every 100 girls.

Despite the ban, Chinese couples went around the law by sending blood samples overseas. To stop the practice, the commission said it would crack down on agents and companies that assist Chinese couples in sending their blood samples abroad for fetal gender testing.

Using the result of the fetal testing, gender selection went on. For its part, the government run after these couples and filed 6,833 cases of illegal fetus gender tests as well as abortions related to gender selection in 2014.

These includes underground testing networks, which deploys agents who make door-to-door calls and collect blood samples that are eventually sent overseas, to help prevent detection by the government.

Another culprit behind China's gender imbalance, said gender studies scholar Lu Pin, is the country's one-child policy since male heirs are expected, under traditional Chinese culture, to take care of parents in their sunset years.

Tagsgender selection, fetal testing, china population, gender imbalance