# Consequences of Gender Ratio in China and India **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 7, 2019, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446 "2019-10-07T20:12:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/41 "2019-10-08T23:14:05Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I wonder if the army or police forces could get plenty of volunteers if they gave them a promise of a wife? How would this affect the ratio of males/females? ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/42 "2019-10-08T23:35:05Z")
It wouldn’t, unless they hold some really elaborate war games. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/43 "2019-10-09T00:07:09Z")
Or… they used the military to capture women from surrounding/enemy countries… which, aside from other problems with that approach, would basically be exporting the problem to someone else as that would result in gender ratio imbalances in the countries they steal women from. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/44 "2019-10-09T04:52:59Z")
I’ve not seen many US adoptions from Asia or Africa. I went to elementary school in a 1950s Los Angeles suburb with a Guatemalan adoptee. The Guatemalan posada my wife and I regularly stayed in mostly hosted US adults looking to adopt. It was a major business in years past but subsequent laws sent would-be adopters away. To China? What to do with too many young males? [ul] [li] Let them stay disappointed; but then they make trouble.[/li][li] Militarize and set them invading, to extend hard power.[/li][li] Send them to 3rd-world projects, to extend soft power.[/li]Maybe they’ll find local women who don’t disgust them. [li] Pay them to go away and maybe do some spying.[/li][li] Grind them up for food: livestock feed or hamburgers.[/li][li] Give them fake ID and hire them for US border patrol.[/li][li] Build a low-tech space program needing millions of men on the slingshot.[/li][/ul] What would I do if I was an excess male? Wait, I already am. So send me to Belize. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/45 "2019-10-09T05:14:13Z")
[quote=“RioRico, post:44, topic:841446”] [li] Give them fake ID and hire them for US border patrol.[/li][/QUOTE] No kidding, we could hire them all to work in three shifts at the US-Mexico border, ten million at a time, and they could maintain a 6-deep round the clock human chain from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific (assuming 2 yards per person, 10 million gets you ~11,000 miles of human chain, and you only need about 1600 miles to cover the border). But of course that would be a terrible idea. It’s only meant to illustrate the scale of the problem. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/46 "2019-10-09T06:50:41Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > While I understand the reasoning behind that, the problem from MY viewpoint is that you’re treating women as a commodity or prize rather than human beings. If you guarantee that the young men serving WILL be getting a wife, then you must, as a consequence, take choice away from women. There may be some men that will have a choice of women (as there is now) but the less desirable men will have the problem of women being reluctant to marry them, so the only way to fulfill the promise is to _force_ women to marry them. > > Of course, you can run a society where women are chattel - there are numerous examples - but personally I have great distaste for that. While Western feminists regularly get all, err excited, at the prospect of polyandry the reality is about as far from from female emancipation as you can get. At least from the Polyandrous marriages in Nepal that I have seen. State sanctioned persistent gang rape is perhaps the most charitable description I can give. I mean imagine have have to not only cook for and clean up after your brother in law, but have sex with him when he is horny. \*Or all that and help him with his school work as in one polyandrous Union I saw. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/47 "2019-10-09T07:13:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And where would all of these female immigrants come from, that wouldn’t just create the same problems in their countries of origin? Well, some of the women fleeing North Korea have ended up - willingly or not - as wives of Chinese men. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/48 "2019-10-09T08:43:30Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > While Western feminists regularly get all, err excited, at the prospect of polyandry the reality is about as far from from female emancipation as you can get. At least from the Polyandrous marriages in Nepal that I have seen. State sanctioned persistent gang rape is perhaps the most charitable description I can give. I think you misunderstand my feelings about the situation. Women in polyandrous marriages are typically just as exploited as in polygynous marriages, if not more so, and often have no more choice in who they marry than in cultures that allow a man multiple wives. Among some North American arctic people practicing polyandry if an infant girl didn’t have the promise of marriage to two men by a certain point in her infancy she’d be exposed to die. Polyandry as a custom in no way ensues a higher status for women. > [@](#): > > I mean imagine have have to not only cook for and clean up after your brother in law, but have sex with him when he is horny. Technically, he wouldn’t be a brother-in-law but rather another husband. **What do you think traditional monogamous marriage has been for millennia for women?** You cook for and clean up after him and have sex when he’s horny regardless of how you might feel at the time. In arranged marriages (of any sort) you might not even like each other, you might not have ever even met each other prior to the marriage ceremony. It wasn’t just a matter of poor folks doing this, the Chinese Emperor had a huge harem, but even he didn’t have a choice in who he had sexual intercourse with - there were palace officials that drew up a schedule and assigned women to the Emperor each night. “Marriage” has rarely been the fairy-tale, voluntary, love-match idealized by the modern west and occasionally spread to other parts of the world. > [@](#): > > \*Or all that and help him with his school work as in one polyandrous Union I saw. > :rolleyes: Right. No woman in a monogamous marriage ever has been called upon to help the man through school or in a career. :rolleyes: In Nepal and Tibet polyandry was typically a woman marrying not a man but all the brothers in a family which if you think about it does not involve a lot of choice on the part of the parties involved. That’s quite different that western “polyamory” where group “marriages” (which have no legal standing) involve independent adults coming together in a voluntary manner as adults, and women have the option of leaving and don’t need a man to survive economically. The “solution” of polyandry is no more exploitative than the suggestion in this thread that men who serve in the military be “guaranteed” a wife, and possibly less so IF the arrangement is entered into voluntarily by all parties including the woman rather than arranged by village elders or government authorities. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/49 "2019-10-09T09:14:58Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > I think you misunderstand my feelings about the situation. Women in polyandrous marriages are typically just as exploited as in polygynous marriages, if not more so, and often have no more choice in who they marry than in cultures that allow a man multiple wives. > > Among some North American arctic people practicing polyandry if an infant girl didn’t have the promise of marriage to two men by a certain point in her infancy she’d be exposed to die. Polyandry as a custom in no way ensues a higher status for women. Thank you for that last bit, I didn’t know about that. > [@](#): > > Technically, he wouldn’t be a brother-in-law but rather another husband. Depends on the guys status. Usually there is a hierachy, see below > [@](#): > > In Nepal and Tibet polyandry was typically a woman marrying not a man but all the brothers in a family which if you think about it does not involve a lot of choice on the part of the parties involved. Typically the woman is only properly married off to the eldest and the other brothers are considered less husbands more brothers in law with sexual access. The other brothers (but sometimes cousins and friends) hope to one day become the prime husband in another union. To answer what you said elsewhere in the post > [@](#): > > B]What do you think traditional monogamous marriage has been for millennia for women?\*\* You cook for and clean up after him and have sex when he’s horny regardless of how you might feel at the time. Yes, but even in the worst case senario, there won’t be socially or legally sanctioned expectation of having sex with others on command.:eek: I mean marry a 25 year old and also get his 20 and 15 year old brothers in the bargain.:eek: ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/50 "2019-10-09T09:15:52Z")
On top of what’s been said before, I figure it’s an incentive for Chinese men to study, work and settle abroad (well, even more than historically) with an eye towards getting a wife before coming back to the Old Country. That being said, I don’t know (and would be curious to know) what the socio-cultural cost of having a non-Chinese wife is. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/51 "2019-10-09T09:31:11Z")
Sending excess males overseas/on adventure/the Army is a long standing solution to such problems. One thing that isn’t appreciated (expecially for India) by most people in this thread is that the gender ratio imbalance is not evenly distributed some regions have much higher rates than others, so a lot of such immigration is internal. It actually become a political issue in India, since they have ,multiple violent insurgencies, one suggestion by the Indian Hindu nationalist Government has been to move bachelor men from one part to a rebel area and marry the women. [Like in occupied Kashmir.](https://www.deccanherald.com/national/national-politics/ill-help-you-buy-land-find-kashmiri-girls-to-marry-752791.html) ---
**Author:** ![mandala](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mandala/32/95_2.png) [@mandala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mandala)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/52 "2019-10-09T10:29:20Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > It actually become a political issue in India, since they have ,multiple violent insurgencies, one suggestion by the Indian Hindu nationalist Government has been to move bachelor men from one part to a rebel area and marry the women. > [Like in occupied Kashmir.](https://www.deccanherald.com/national/national-politics/ill-help-you-buy-land-find-kashmiri-girls-to-marry-752791.html) One swallow does not a summer make - you mention this like it were declared policy of the “Hindu nationalist” government. My reading is the lawmaker’s comment points more to India’s obsession with fair-skinned girls than anything else. Besides the sex ratio in Kashmir is already in favor of men. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/53 "2019-10-09T13:19:15Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > While I understand the reasoning behind that, the problem from MY viewpoint is that you’re treating women as a commodity or prize rather than human beings. If you guarantee that the young men serving WILL be getting a wife, then you must, as a consequence, take choice away from women. There may be some men that will have a choice of women (as there is now) but the less desirable men will have the problem of women being reluctant to marry them, so the only way to fulfill the promise is to _force_ women to marry them. > > Of course, you can run a society where women are chattel - there are numerous examples - but personally I have great distaste for that. One way would be to kind of “pay” the women to marry certain men. They could be promised a house and never have to work outside the home or something. That might very well appeal to a Chinese woman laboring 12 hours a day for pennies in a factory. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/54 "2019-10-09T15:59:22Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > There’s also the consequences of the [Little Emperor syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_emperor_syndrome). You have millions of young men who were brought up in a family environment where they were treated as the center of the world. But once they get out in the real world they find that not only are they not the center of it but they are surrounded by all these other men who are equally self-centered. Why single out men? Single daughters are in the same boat. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/55 "2019-10-09T16:03:47Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > On top of what’s been said before, I figure it’s an incentive for Chinese men to study, work and settle abroad (well, even more than historically) with an eye towards getting a wife before coming back to the Old Country. That being said, I don’t know (and would be curious to know) what the socio-cultural cost of having a non-Chinese wife is. Unfortunately, the Chinese men who are most affected by this gender gap (namely, poor men living in rural regions, where the shortage of women is most dire) are precisely the kind of people for whom traveling abroad to study and work is virtually impossible. These are people struggling to get by on mere dollars a day. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/56 "2019-10-09T16:13:18Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Female immigration will bring its own long term problems. Chinese society has depended on ethnic homogeneity in defining itself. But in a generation you’re going to have a large number of Chinese people who have a Han father and a mother from some other country. That’s going to force a major re-adjustment in the popular view of what it means to be Chinese. China has never been ethnically homogeneous. Going back to the Three Kingdoms period we see barbarian tribes that are today in the middle of what we would thing of as Han country. China swallowed up surrounding tribes and absorbed them. Here is one example. [Five Barbarians - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Barbarians) ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/57 "2019-10-09T16:17:12Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Unfortunately, the Chinese men who are most affected by this gender gap (namely, poor men living in rural regions, where the shortage of women is most dire) are precisely the kind of people for whom traveling abroad to study and work is virtually impossible. These are people struggling to get by on mere dollars a day. And they have difficulty moving from poor rural regions to the cities. > **[Internal passport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_passport)** > > An internal or domestic passport is a type of identity document issued in a passport-like booklet format. Internal passports may have a variety of uses including: > When passports first emerged, there was no clear distinction between internal and international ones. Later, some countries developed sophisticated systems of passports for various purposes and various groups of population.\[weasel words\] > Countries that currently have internal passports in the strict sense (to control internal migratio... > [@](#): > > The People’s Republic of China (PRC) maintains a system of residency registration in mainland China known as hukou, by which government permission is needed to formally change one’s place of residence. It is enforced with identity cards. This system effectively controlled internal migration before the 1980s, but subsequent market reforms caused it to collapse as a means of migration control. An estimated 150 to 200 million people are part of the “blind flow” and have unofficially migrated, generally from poor, rural areas to wealthy, urban ones. However, unofficial residents are often denied official services such as education and medical care and are sometimes subject to both social and political discrimination. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/58 "2019-10-12T18:53:21Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > One thing that might help somewhat is that Russia, which neighbors China, has a surplus of women. There are significantly fewer men in Russia than women. Problem is, most of those Russian women are in western Russia, far from China. And even if they interacted with Chinese men, there would be a formidable two-way language barrier betwixt the two of them, and that’s not taking into account whether they would want to intermarry to begin with. > > Otherwise, in theory, millions of Russian single women could marry millions of single Chinese men. It would only suffice to solve a tiny fraction of the problem, but it’s worth a shot. In theory, yes, but my understanding is that Russian women are not enamored of Chinese men. Judging by the dating sites, they prefer Westerners. Historically, their culture has never been pro-Chinese anyway. And the Russian men? You don’t see many on the dating sites. And what do the Russian women think of their menfolk? I gather that one piece of advice given to young women was “marry a [Russian] Hew, they don’t drink.” ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/59 "2019-10-12T18:55:12Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > The thing I notice about the gender ratio from that original article is that, even knowing their sons are going to have a shit-ton of trouble finding women to marry them does not appear to have fixed the Indian and Chinese preferences for having sons. Those are nice projections there showing the gender-birth-gap closing but they’re just projections - it hasn’t actually happened yet. Dowry is still a thing in India, sexism is still prevalent in both countries … there’s a deep aversion to responding to a lack of women by giving women an actual better deal in life, or prioritising women higher than men. In India the gender gap has been fueled by abortions of fetuses that were determined to be female, due to the desire to have sons… ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446/60 "2019-10-12T19:00:03Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > I am sure you are basing this on your deep knowledge of the areas in question backed up by years of research.:rolleyes: I’ve heard the same thing about India. Rural areas have always been places where new additions to the family could be quietly removed if surplus to requirements. The wealthier urbanites get ultrasound tests and abort if the fetus is female. It’s only a question of timing. As for redressing the sex ratio, both Finland and Russia had a big imbalance after WW2. Finland seems to be back to normal now, AFAIK, but Russia has not. Are they putting something in the vodka? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consequences-of-gender-ratio-in-china-and-india/841446.md?page=4)