Thursday, December 12, 2002

A story released today by the Associated Press reports that the expulsions of a pregnant student and her boyfriend from a Chinese university have touched off a rare public debate about sexual morality in this fast-changing society.

The pair was expelled in October after a school doctor found the 19-year-old woman was pregnant, according to numerous reports in state media.

The doctor reported the pregnancy to school officials, who forced the woman, a student of law and economics, to write a confession naming her 21-year-old lover, where and when they met and how many times they had sex.

Some reports said her parents are considering suing the university for damages, saying it violated her privacy.

The incident highlights the tension between expanding personal freedoms as China eases controls on the economy and society, and the still-intrusive official regulation of morality.

Dating, holding hands and kissing in public -- activities once unthinkable -- are now commonplace in Chinese cities and on college campuses, and there is growing acceptance of premarital sex.

Unmarried couples have been fined for living together, and the government retains a one-child birth control policy. In part to lower the birth rate, the minimum age for marriage is set relatively high at 20 for women and 22 for men.

The incident has received prominent coverage in China's increasingly feisty popular press. The Shanghai Youth Daily newspaper devoted a full page to the incident Tuesday, citing academics who were unanimous in criticizing the expulsions.

"If this sort of problem happens again in the future, female university students will be afraid of punishment and secretly seek abortions at illegal clinics," Xu Anqi, a women's studies researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted as saying. "This may do great harm to their health."