Wifeless future for China's men (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By James Reynolds
BBC News, Beijing

***
Since the late 1970s Chinese couples have been allowed just one child - and most parents here prefer to have a son.

"It's having a real effect," said Ms Zheng, the school's head teacher.

"One of our classes has 39 boys and just eight girls. It's a serious problem. When there are more boys than girls, the girls copy the boys and they become more aggressive," she said.
***
An official estimate says that, by 2020, there may be 30 million men of marriageable age who will not be able to find a wife.

The gender imbalance has various causes. Abortions on female foetuses are believed to be widespread as couples, particularly in rural areas, hope for a son who will look after them in their old age. There is also suspected under-reporting of female births.
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6346931.stm

[burrowowl]

1. One way to decrease population and

look up India too. Long live Polyandry!

[Ignacio Upton]

2. This is fucked up

While this will help to keep China's population in check, it will have adverse economic consequences. Also, while I'm pro-choice I'm oppose to any FORCED abortion. Such a practice is just is anti-choice from a different angle.

[musical_soul]

15. That is why we call ourselves pro-choice.

Choice is about letting people have a CHOICE, not about telling them to give birth or have an abortion.

With that being said, the problem in China isn't the policy. It's a culture that is centuries old. The Communist leader Mao actually helped to raise the morale of women by getting them more involved in the workforce. However, a lot of work still needs to be done. The laws in China do try to do their part by saying they can't find out the gender of the baby until birth. This idea of trying again for a boy is actually meant to make sure people don't kill infant girls. They are trying. It's just a lot of work in the culture still needs to be done.

[madrchsod]

3. that is a large amount of dispensable men

for an army to wage war. india and the rest of the asia should be very worried

[radiofreepress]

26. lots of bitter young men

[Berry Cool]

4. I'd like to know what exactly they thought was going to happen

back when the one-child policy was enacted and the mass aborting of female fetuses/abandonment of female babies in favor of males began.

Back when the whole policy started and I'd read about how parents were favoring male babies as a result, I thought "Whom do they expect all these male babies to marry and have children with when they grow up? They are killing off the next generation by being so biased in favor of the male sex. They are raising a whole generation of men who will have no women of their own with whom to have a family."

Sure enough, now they are reaping what they sowed. What's amazing is that nobody appears to have thought through events to their inevitable conclusion. It doesn't take a rocket scientist.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Maybe they were expecting the men to have really short average life spans ...

I refer you to China's appaling workplace safety regulations, or more precisely, the absence thereof.

[Missy M]

5. Female revenge...

now the females can pick and choose the best out of the 30 million marriageable men. Not bad!

[KitSileya]

7. That's not how it will work.

Women are already being kidnapped, bought and sold for these "little emperors", with human traffickers crossing borders into China's neighboring countries to kidnap women. In addition, those too poor, too ugly, and too stupid to attract a wife form a dangerous underclass of men. ALready, China is seeing an increase in petty crimes and violence.

[Missy M]

8. On the other hand....

those females "too poor, too ugly and too stupid to attract" a husband will now have a chance. In reality I was just trying to make a joke.

[KitSileya]

9. I'm sorry I didn't get the joke.

There's been several articles in local papers about the major trouble China is anticipating because of how misogyny has impacted the one child strategy, with several accounts of how women have been kidnapped and brought to China and been sexually enslaved. I guess I was too serious-minded when thinking about the subject, so I didn't see the joke.

With a deficit of women, women will become more valuable, but unfortunately, they become more valuable not as themselves, but to those who control and own them.

A couple of years back there was a Chinese couple living in the same dorm as me, and she became pregnant while he was finishing his degree. Because her due date was a couple of months after his graduation, they had to wait until the baby was old enough to fly before they could go back. The baby was a girl, but the father informed me that that wasn't too bad, because his wife belonged to a minority ethnic group that was allowed two children if the first was a girl, and in China they could ensure that their second child was a boy. That mindset is so foreign to me, I had trouble keeping my mouth shut.

[Missy M]

10. I know this is a serious issue for the people of China.....

perhaps this wouldn't have happened if the people didn't have their primitive way of thinking about the sexes. A female can help take care of her elderly parents as well as a male. They should let nature take its course and give birth to whatever sex the child is and this would not have happened. I should not have joked about such a serious issue. Their mindset is also foreign to me yet I do understand the need for some birth control. By birth control I mean the pill or some other means before pregnancy. What bothers me is the couple you knew could have another child but they had to ensure it would be a boy, that is wrong.

[iamjoy]

16. No, The Female Can't

the female can't take care of her parents.

The reason is, when she marries, she goes into her husband's household. At that point, she is required to take care of HIS family. When people had multiple children, it wasn't a problem. The girl took care of her husband's parents, but her parents were okay, because their son's wife took care of them.

It's another aspect of the Asian culture, and I believe it works that way in India, too.

[demrabble]

11. Aren't Female Chinese Babies Being Exported?

I know several people here in the US who have adopted Chinese baby girls.

Doesn't that just aggrevate the problem in China?

[politicat]

12. Hello, Boxer Rebellion!

The Boxer Rebellion (in the late 19th century) had its roots in the fact that the ratio of men to women (due to female infanticide in the mid to late 19th century driven by major droughts) was about 1.2 to 1 (and China had polygamy among the higher classes). The current situation is WAY worse, rapidly approaching 2 to 1, and may pass 3 to 1 by 2025. The Rebellion happened because there were a lot of young (and not so young) men who had no families and nothing to make them think twice before starting a war. Men stayed in their youth gangs far past the stage they normally would have married and left the gang because there were no women to marry.

This will happen again. History has shown that when there are men who can't marry, wars happen because they have nothing better to do with their time and no reason to think beyond themselves. (I assume that the same would happen were women to outnumber men at such a significant rate, but since it has never happened at a time when we also had most of the political power, it's never been seen.)

[Warpy]

13. Those people who rid themselves of daughters until

they finally produce a son are going to be in for a rude surprise: sons don't care for their elderly parents, daughters in law do.

Unless they can come up with one hell of a dowry, their sons will likely remain bachelors.

Luring single women off to factory jobs only makes the whole thing worse.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. No, that doesn't work, because your daughter can't become your daughter-in-law

Even if what you say is correct, having daughters still does nothing to increase your chances of being cared for in your old age, whereas having sons does.

Of course, if you and all your neighbours just have sons, none of you get daughters in law, but that's game theory for you.

[noamnety]

14. The attitudes in that article are disgusting

When there are more boys than girls, the girls copy the boys and they become more aggressive," she said.

God forbid aggressiveness in the BOYS should be dealt with. No, the problem is clearly that the girls are beginning to act like boys, instead of like nice passive girls. :(

At home they have to cook for themselves. That is embarrassing in a country where women are expected to make the food.

How humiliating for the men to have to do women's work. :( :(

Is that supposed to make me sympathetic toward those four brothers?

[iamjoy]

17. Mail Order Brides

in reverse. The Chinese men will be ordering women from the United States. I sort of thought it tongue in cheek at first. You know, as our debt to them increases...our economy goes south as theirs increases...it's only a matter of time before companies start offering American women "a better life"

As I read some of the other posts about kidnapping and sexual slavery, I think maybe one day China demands repayment of debt with some of our most precious "resource" or "commodity."

[jmm]

19. I would be nice if this

was incentive for them to change their sexist traditions but instead I'm suppose to feel sorry for men who are embarrassed to cook for themselves :wtf:.

[Warpy]

20. "a son who will look after them in old age"

Yeah, right. It's the daughter in law that does that, as all those rural Chinese who smothered a girl to try for a boy will find out soon enough.

Oddly enough, even with this imbalance, girls are still seen as a liability as they will marry away from the birth family.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. Aquiring a son helps aquire a daughter in law, aquiring a daughter doesn't.

The "ideal" situation is if everyone else has daughters and you have sons.

The problem is not that daughters are "seen" as a liability. The problem is that, because of the way Chinese culture works, they *are* a liability.

[Warpy]

22. Acquiring a son will acquire them a lifelong bachelor

I have a sneaking suspicion that bachelor sons won't be particularly good at caring for parents in their old age, especially if he's gone into the army or into a factory job to escape poverty.

[5fingersurfer]

23. A new twist

I bet in the next 10 years or so China will take over as the #1 customer in the mail order bride business. Maybe by then they will be shopping for American instead of Russian mail order brides.

[Nobody]

24. They won't be able to get wives from India

Upper caste families in India are aborting female fetuses as fast as they can tell they're female. They're not doing this to the same magnitude as China is, and abortion is much quieter thanflat out infanticide and child abandonment.

In the 80s I read a news article in US News talking about a family where the mother was pregnant again and the father took the 4 year old daughter out to the well and threw her down it. She screamed, calling for daddy to come get her.

That's about when China modified the one child per couple law, because killing girls was illegal and hard to enforce.

If you want a really depressing read, read a short story by Wendy Hornsby called "Nine Sons" about a midwestern farm family in the 1800s.

[mystwoman]

25. do they play with their own toxic toys?

Every time I hear the word "China" in the news lately it has to do with date rape drugs in toys and edible death in Chinese toys and recalls.

How can the Chinese afford the one child program with so many toxic toys flying around? Or do they only ship them abroad?