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To: SunkenCiv

[China may still want to start a war with a pushover, in part to cull their own surplus males.]


The bare branch phenomenon (i.e. men with no brides) is a recurring phenomenon throughout history for every society known to man. China was historically polygamous, with brides in such demand that a bride price, where the groom’s family pays a significant sum of money to his in-laws for her hand in marriage, is the rule there. (Whereas elsewhere, the bride’s family pays a dowry to the groom’s family). Even in ostensibly monogamous societies, large numbers of men remained unattached because (1) wealthy men had unofficial liaisons and children with multiple women and (2) women, being hypergamous (prone towards marrying-up) disdained men of equal or lower social status. The marriage rate in China today (i.e. marriages per 1000 individuals) is actually higher than in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_demography

It’s unclear to me which great thinker first pulled this particular theory out of thin air, but nobody sends soldiers off to war for the reason you cited. China is far higher income (2x-4x) than many of the countries to the south and west, and could import millions of picture brides to fill the need if necessary. But the reality is that Japan and Korea have far higher numbers of unattached males and they’re not exactly revolting. War as a means of dealing with internal pressures is fine if the outcome is more or less guaranteed and the casualty numbers are likely to be low. That does not describe any war in which the US is China’s opposite number.

Major Chinese dynasties have fallen with the entire royal clan, numbering in the tens of thousands, killed to the last man, woman and child, in the wake of major battlefield defeats. Chinese policymakers don’t always make great decisions, but they always consult the past.


12 posted on 11/23/2018 12:22:27 AM PST by Zhang Fei (They can have my pitbull when they pry his cold dead jaws off my ass.)
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To: Zhang Fei
Thanks Zhang Fei.

16 posted on 11/23/2018 7:38:58 AM PST by SunkenCiv (and btw -- https://www.gofundme.com/for-rotator-cuff-repair-surgery)
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