Posted on 08/13/2007 6:43:54 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
According to its Academy of Social Sciences, China “suffers from the world’s most severe brain drain.” Approximately two-thirds of the Chinese who have studied abroad in the past two decades did not return home.
The BBC offered many possible explanations for this drain: the lack of opportunities at home; a lack of freedom, especially after Tiananmen Square, and a preference for the Western “lifestyle.”
One factor that was not mentioned but should have been was a concern about spending the rest of your life alone.
According to China’s State Population and Family Planning Commission, “by 2020 some 30 million Chinese men will not be able to find wives.” If these thirty million men were a country, they would be one of the forty most-populous countries in the world.
This inability to find wives, in the commission’s words, “may lead to social instability.” I guess it will. According to Constance Kong, a consultant in Shanghai, “given that understatement is a characteristic of the Chinese Government when it discusses national problems, this means that it is [really] alarmed.”
The government has only itself to blame. The looming imbalance between men and women of marriageable age is the completely foreseeable result of China’s “one-child” policy. Limited to one child in “a country where daughters are unwanted,” many Chinese families, especially in rural areas, made sure—even by infanticide—that the one child born was a boy.
As a result, in parts of China, there are 130 males for every 100 females. Government attempts to end sex selection, such as prohibiting doctors from revealing the sex of unborn children, have failed: Families regularly bribe doctors.
This demographic imbalance has created a new market: kidnapping young girls from other parts Asia, not for the sex trade, but to provide wives.
Given the role that marriage and family plays in socializing males and the trouble that young unmarried men have historically created, it is little wonder that Beijing is alarmed. But that’s not the only problem caused by the “one-child” policy.
It “has also created the world’s fastest aging population.” China’s population is stabilizing, but, thanks to the “one-child” policy, it is replacing working-age adults with those over sixty. The result: a demographic “Titanic gunning for the iceberg,” according to Kong.
This iceberg has raised many concerns among foreign investors. They are no longer putting all their eggs in the Chinese basket. As Kong puts it, it is no longer “China or bust,” but “if only China, bust.” This diversion of funds threatens China’s ability to provide jobs for the tens of millions moving into its cities in search of work.
Given China’s history, its leaders are right to be alarmed about the possible impact its demographics will have on “social stability.”
China is not the only place where demographic trends are frightening: 3,500 miles away in Tehran, demographics have officials worried, and because they are worried, we need to be worried, as well. I will tell you more about this tomorrow.
China, having chosen “lifestyle” over life itself, is going to find out how costly that preference really was—and provide an object lesson to those of us in the West who are facing birthrate declines of our own.
(This commentary first aired on March 7, 2007, and is part one in a three-part series.)
There are links to further information at the source document.
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Population control ping...
Ya think?
How many Jihadists are married, other than the leadership.
Yeah, yeah—cry me a river. With over 1.2 billion people, I think China could use a population “bust” for a few decades. Market forces will soon kick in to make girls very desirable (if they have not already).
Of course, the problem is what to do with all those excess guys in the short term. I suspect they will make excellent cannon fodder.
We’re going to see wars the likes of which the world hasn’t seen in 1000’s of years.
Invasion of another country for the sole purpose of stealing their women.
The invaded country’s men, unneeded, will be killed.
I’ve read that Russia has the opposite problem...
Lots of long-living women... not so many healthy men
Still sounds like a sex trade to me, just of a different variety.
I’ve read that Russia has the opposite problem...
Lots of long-living women... not so many healthy men
THe problem here is that humanity has a short memory in the aggregate. In the not all that distant past there was a chronic shortage of females in virtually every society on Earth. This occurred because of a high maternal death rate. Modern medical practices have virtually eliminated this category of death except in the most isolated and primitive areas.
So, what was normal society like when women were in short supply? Well, you had your whorehouses ~ yup ~ everybody did. Lots of 'em, mostly within easy walking distance of major residential districts.
A small percentage of women provided sexual services to a large percentage of the men.
Other women were pretty much isolated from the world at large ~ those veils, shawls and large bag-like dresses meant something in Germany, France, Iran, China and major trade cities in the Inca Empire. Wealthy men might even acquire more than one wife and keep them in purdah.
China will probably revert to the more traditional system as the disparity grows.
Just think how terrified the sheep are.
I am not exactly sitting here patiently awaiting my fate as a “spoil of war” as a woman of the USA.
I don’t know all that many women of Indian (the country) heritage, but those I did meet are not passive victims either.
Where will all those “extra” men find women open to marriage via forced rape and pillage, nowadays?
Perhaps China will be forced to look to the Islamic middle east to locate a productive “war venue” with any possibility of actual gain.
Think about it....
With all due respect, get bent.
market forces? ummmm welcome to china.
With all due respect, get bent.
With all due respect, you need to chill out. If this is your reaction to a post that is neither obscene or malicious, then maybe you should look elsewhere—like the Daily KOS.
Save your moral outrage for someone who's going to buy your crap. Oh, and please get bent.
Yeah, they live in a country where they can kill their kid and get away with it, but he’s expecting nice, civilized market forces to take care of the problem. Yeesh.
Yeah, yeah-—whatever. Deal with it.
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