According to Beijing’s Southern Weekend newspaper, an average of 474 rural Chinese women commit suicide each day, or over 173,000 each year.
Medical doctors reported these findings based on four years of data, gathered from 1990-1994. Approximately 99,266 or 58% of the 173,000 annual victims were young, aged between 15 and 39. Most of the victims killed themselves with poison.
The newspaper theorized that the women were driven to suicide by poverty, wanting to escape problems, a desire for revenge, a hope to induce guilt, or to prove one’s innocence following a false accusation.