CHINA IS introducing its first medical guidelines on sex change surgery that require candidates for surgery to be single, to have no criminal record and an agreement from police to change their sex on their identification cards once the procedure is complete.
There are an estimated 1,000 transsexuals in China, but there are believed to be many hundreds of thousands who would go for a gender reassignment operation to have their sex changed but are unaware of the regulations.
Candidates also must show they have lived publicly as the other gender for more than two years, demonstrated “unwavering desire to change” for at least five years and spent one year in psychotherapy, according to the ministry of health website. They must be over 20 years of age. They also have to have told their family about their wishes.
The ministry posted the regulation online to solicit opinions from its local bureaus, which are due by July 10th.
The new rules set thresholds for medical facilities and doctors eligible for transsexual operations. For example, hospitals must have an ethics committee to evaluate applications and a plastic surgery department that has operated for more than 10 years.
Surgeons must have more than five years of experience in transsexual operations, presumably to stop the sex change industry filling up with quacks the way other plastic surgery areas have, and the new rules aim to improve the oversight of sex change operations in China and ensure their safety, the ministry says.
Qiu Renzhong, an ethicist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said some of the guidelines seemed unreasonable, such as requiring individuals to live as members of the opposite sex before surgery. “Transsexuals who might consider sex change remain largely hidden in China’s mainstream social life. It’s hard for them to live and work openly in the gender role they want,” he told the China Daily newspaper.
“As long as a person meets the physical and mental requirements, she or he should be granted the permit to have the surgery. The police should change the sex of the receiver on the identity card accordingly,” he said.
He Qinglian, a veteran doctor of plastic surgery including gender reassignment operations with the Shanghai 411 Hospital, said all stakeholders, including the hospital and prospective receivers, should be highly cautious about this surgery, which is more than a medical procedure due to its huge social and legal consequences.