Op-Ed Contributors

Who says suicide rate is rising?

By Wang Yiqing (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-11 08:24

Ever since Canadian psychiatrist Michael R. Phillips, who works in China, released his report saying China's suicide rate from 1995 to 1999 reached 0.023 percent, the country has been ranked among those with the highest suicide rates in the world. This and some sensational suicide cases, such as the "Foxconn incidents", have made people assume that suicides have become a serious social issue and are getting worse in China.

But Jing Jun, a professor of sociology in Tsinghua University, challenges that view and presents the true picture through his nationwide research. Jing and his students took one year to set up the first national database on suicide rate to grasp the overall trend of suicides in China. They collected data from the Health Statistics Annuals of the World Health Organization, China's disease surveillance point system (sample size 10 million), and the country's Health Statistics Annuals (which cover 100 million people). The database covers 23 years, from 1987 to 2009.

Jing calculates the crude suicide rate (used widely across the world) in China based on these data. Though the suicide rate was comparatively high in the early years, his study shows it has dropped in recent years, as opposed to the ascending trend in the rest of the world.

According to Jing's calculation, China's suicide rate had dropped to about 0.01 percent in 2004. In 2009, the figure dropped further to 0.007 percent, which is rather low compared with the global rate of 0.016 percent. Even if the "missing" suicides were added (a study in the 1990s showed the rate of "missing reports of suicides" is about 9 percent) China's suicide rate in 2009 would still be below 0.008 percent.

Michael Phillips, too, admits that China's suicide rate has dropped in recent years. "Different from the media and the public's belief, the trend of suicides in China is declining," Jing says.

Jing has found that one of the main reasons why the suicide rate has dropped was the steady and big decline in the number of suicides committed rural women. The suicide rate among rural women declined sharply from 0.03 percent in 1987 to less than 0.01 percent 2009.

In the early years, researchers generally agreed that the suicide rate among Chinese women was higher than among men, which is pretty rare in the rest of the world. But the suicide rate among Chinese women, especially in rural areas, has declined remarkably in recent years. In fact, it is almost equal to that of Chinese men.

As a sociologist, Jing is more interested in the social causes that led to the decline. Studying the data from 1987 to 2009, Jing found that the decline in the suicide rate in rural areas coincides with the increase in the rate of outflow of rural workers. The two indices are basically inversely proportional to each other: The more people leave their villages to work in cities, the lower the suicide rate among the rural population.

Jing says the huge number of women migrating to big and small cities for work (more than 44 million) has played a direct role in the reduction of the suicide rate. He advances the concept of "three departures" to explain why rural women's migration has reduced the suicide rate. Migration to cities helps rural woman workers to be free of subordination, family conflicts and the major suicide tool: pesticide.

First, women, especially in rural areas, still have a comparatively low social position in China. Surveys show that rural women have less freedom than men when it comes to marriage and education. After marriage, women in rural areas almost always step into a strange social and family environment, often without enough support. Hence, rural women are still considered inferior when it comes to some kinds of interpersonal relations. Jing says that by migrating to cities to work, women keep away from the subordination they are subjected to in villages. This reduces their desperation and prevents them from thinking of committing suicide.

Second, although a lot of factors could trigger suicidal tendencies, the greatest factor that pushes young women across the world toward suicide is unhappiness in love or marriage. Four major studies on suicides in Sichuan, Shandong and Hubei provinces show about half of the victims committed suicide in rurual areas because of family conflicts.

Such conflicts, especially between mother and daughter-in-laws, are natural in Chinese society and can hardly be mediated. "Migration helps rural women to leave such family conflicts behind," Jing says.

And third, studies show the majority of people who commit suicide in rural areas do so by drinking pesticide. Compared with women living in the countryside, migrant woman workers hardly have access to pesticides. The absence of pesticides from urban dwellings means fewer suicides among women.

Jing believes that the transition of life from rural to urban areas has helped reduce the suicide rate among rural women as well as the national suicide rate.

But Jing has noticed a strange phenomenon. In most countries, the suicide rate among youths is higher than that among senior citizens. But in China, it is the opposite. Besides, the suicide rate among the senior citizens in urban areas increased remarkably during a period in this decade.

Since the major causes that force senior citizens to commit suicide are disillusionment with the world because of chronic illnesses and/or family conflicts, Jing says the high suicide rate among them in urban areas has something to do with social factors such as aging, lack of medical security and conflicts caused by large-scale demolitions.

Several facts support Jing's deduction. The suicide rate among senior citizens in urban areas fell in 2006, the year the National Basic Medical Insurance System for Urban Residents was implemented. Many a hutong in Beijing has been demolished since the 1990s and the resultant family conflicts caused by the relocation of the residents - especially senior citizens - have increased. These factors coincided with the increase in the suicide rate among senior citizens.

Jing criticizes attempts to exaggerate China's suicide rate, and tries to correct the public's false impression through his study.

And he disagrees with people who attribute suicides mainly to mental illness .

As a sociologist, Jing regards suicide as a social issue, and believes improvement of social policies will reduce the suicide rate even further. More people's lives can be saved if the authorities adjust our social environment for the better, he concludes.

(China Daily 11/11/2010 page9)