TELEVISION : Better to be born an elephant

GREAT joy at the birth of a baby girl, all wrinkly and wobbly! Everyone comes to look, to nuzzle, fondle and comfort her, to see her take her first bath or first steps. A fine welcome for a female child, born into a matriarchal society. But that's elephants for you, as seen in The Echo of the Elephants (BBC2). Human societies have given men all the power, and what a mess they've made of it. The state of Chinese orphanages is just the latest atrocity brought to our reluctant notice.

Return to the Dying Rooms (C4) - a revised version of the original programme shown last year- examined both the treatment of abandoned babies (mostly female) and the wider question of the infringement of women's rights in China, where young girls are colloquially known as "maggots in the rice". The disgusting preference for male offspring in China is centuries old, but it's been exacerbated in recent years by the one-child-per-family policy promoted by the government in an effort to curb population growth. The result has been a mass "culling" of baby girls. Unwanted infants who have escaped forced abortions or murder at birth are sent to orphanages so understaffed that even basic needs cannot be met. Newborn babies are left alone for hours with a bottle pointing at them in their cribs, toddlers are tied to "potty benches" for the day (a primitive method of avoiding nappy changes), making them a perfect prey for older, maladjusted children who pause to torment them as they wander by. And all succumb to untreated illnesses.

But in terms of international standards of child abuse, what distinguishes these orphanages are signs that the policy of torture, murder and neglect of children has been officially authorised. Government- enforced contraception, sterilisation and abortion are all very well (though they imply a general disrespect for a woman's right to control her own fecundity), but starving babies to death takes population control beyond the bounds of reason. Whatever showers of disapproval are bestowed on other aspects of conception, they ought to be contained once a viable human being is before you. Instead these infants are treated like defecation machines on an assembly line, ignored, abused, rejected and, allegedly, often sentenced to death - or "summary resolution" - for any number of apparent faults. An exiled doctor who worked at a Shanghai orphanage said she noticed the death rate (then 90 per cent) was continually rising, and the selection process depended on the whims of the caretakers. "Children who are ill, handicapped, who have difficulties in walking or need to be fed, who have illnesses such as pneumonia, intestinal bleeding or vomiting, or who are dirty or naughty or just not good-looking" were refused food and water.

No one has ever been punished for these murders. In a country famed for its brutal nature - where you can be imprisoned for bumping into people on your bicycle, and public executions are routine - such leniency suggests that the behaviour of the orphanage workers is condoned.

It would be nice to think that all the potential wives and dutiful daughters- in-law who have been eliminated will eventually be missed by the predominantly male population. The Chinese government, belatedly realising that by the end of the century they'll have a "hoodlum army of 70 million single men" on their hands, has let it be known that women have some value. But perhaps this is only a pretence. The government is in fact achieving its objective. What form of population restraint could be more effective than limiting the number of available wombs?

Weirdly, Dame Edna's Hollywood followed, and by the time The Dying Rooms Debate began, all the participants seemed a bit tired. They were engulfed in a blue light which further becalmed them, though Jonathan Mirsky pointed energetically at the air and claimed that the orphanages were the worst thing he'd come across in 40 years of reporting on China. Others rallied to voice their horror. Unfortunately there was no one in the studio to get really angry at except Elisabeth Croll, of the School of Oriental and African Studies, who seemed to think it appropriate to smile incessantly, and a Chinese doctor, unforgettably named Lulu Langtree, who was there to defend China against any allegation that might crop up. And that was an end to it. What should be done remains an open question. So far all that this programme has accomplished is to antagonise the Chinese government and make it impossible for other British film-makers to work in China.

And so to the great avenger of oppression across the globe: yes, it's George Bush! We've had two sections of BBC1's dogged and doting The Gulf War, with two more to come. I've watched them all, and none put so sharply into focus the reality of war as Maggie O'Kane's one-hour Riding the Storm (C4) did last week. The reality of war is - despite all the improvements in communication and supposed freedoms of speech - an unabashed stream of lies, damn lies and statistics. A nonsensical agenda (continually revised), propaganda voluntarily spread by duped reporters, political posturing and a hell of a lot of human suffering: this is what lay behind all the colourful video games that filled our TV screens. But relatively few Western soldiers were killed, so for Bush it was a triumph.

Calling Saddam another Hitler, Bush ached to destroy him. Yet, curiously enough, it was only Saddam's invasion of Kuwait that disturbed Bush: what Saddam did to his own rebels afterwards, or to the Kurds, was of no concern. This is like fuming over Hitler's invasion of Poland but ignoring what he did to the Jews. And after thousands of Iraqi deaths, the fireworks display of smart bombs, dumb bombs, radioactive, chemically and biologically contaminated bombs, missiles and anti-missiles and all the other entertainments of violent conflict, it turns out that soldiers on the winning side are coming down with cancers and Iraqi children are getting leukaemia. Neither simple nor heroic, the war was just a sordid show of strength.

One seeks solace in small things: a working typewriter, vanilla tea, the Newbury bypass protests and ... the appearance of a new kind of strongman on The Paranormal World of Paul McKenna (ITV). Having apparently decided that stage hypno- tism's a bit iffy, Paul has thrown himself into proving that strange things do happen. Strange, but boring, things. He's found a Ukrainian, Lavrinenko, who spends his time electrocuting himself with enough volts to kill a sheep. He can slow his heartbeat down to zero, or speed it up (this trick seemed to cause unnecessary alarm in the audience). He can pull a 40-tonne steam engine with wires attached - through his skin! - to muscles in his arms (we were advised not to try this at home). And he can sink to the bottom of a large fish-tank and stay there, not breathing, for several minutes (I think, five).

He's not the only person in the world who can do such things. But he's the only person who wants to. Accompanying him in his endeavours is his wife-cum-interpreter, who monitors his pulse and goosebumps. I guess it beats being sawn in half by a lesser magician.