Apparently there are 119 men for each 100 women. In some areas it’s 130 to 100. Normal ratios are supposed to be 103-107 to one:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100111/hl_afp/chinapopulationmenmarriage
Gonna be a lot of frustrated Chinese guys in the near future.
And I thought I had it bad.
Not only that but there is a geographic skew as well. Many women go to the eastern coastal cities for the factory jobs and the men go to the western provinces to do large construction jobs (railway, dams, roads). It is a ticking time bomb.
103-107 men for every one woman? That’s a ratio not usually seen outside of a gay bar or (add your least favorite college here)'s engineering department.
I think it is just as bad in India. I wonder if the dowry tradition will survive this. It shouldn’t; there should be competition for women and perhaps they will institute bride price instead. That would be a rational response and the ratio would adjust toot sweet since suddenly girls would have economic value not an economic drag.
Clever title. I take it the SE is represents the higher level of males, and the x is the lower number of females. Clever.
I mean, you’re too good to have just made a typo, right? 
C’mon – you see how rarely I make TYpos.
Jocelyn Elders had her great idea 16 years ago:
Oops! With her brilliant insight, it seems she came too soon. Call it premature ideation. Maybe she can go to China and teach semenars on how Chinese men and women can handle themselves in the absence of suitable partners.
It said on the news that there are 30 million fewer Chinese women than men. That’s HUGE!
I fixed the typo in the thread title, but I can’t do anything about that 103:1 thing.
Ther’s likely to be a lot of pressure in heavily-male areas to look the other way at prostitution, and that’s probably going to produce a spike in STDs.
It’s a terrific environment if you want a ready pool of conscripts willing to travel and fight for a standing army.
I was always afraid that this kind of population imbalance could lead to war… How’s that for paranoid?
It was explained to me that the imbalance came about because of the Chinese tradition that when your daughter marries, she goes away and becomes a member of her husband’s family and helps support his parents in their old age.
Since a son and whoever he marries supports his parents, the ideal is to make sure you have a son or two to support you. There is/was no government old-age pension system.
When the “one child” program was put in place, families decided to abort, throw down a well, or leave on the side of the road any female babies in favor of having their only child be male. Pure economic necessity, especially in rural areas. Male babies lived; female babies did not.
I see what you did there.
We can hope, but apparently one solution in China is to kidnap a girl (usually from the country) and force her into marriage. Demand without supply can foster crime, too.
Couldn’t you at least send some Gatorade and lube?
The government could encourage mass emigration (legal and illegal) of single males. If illegal migrants are caught without documentation in the host country, the Chinese government could deny that they are citizens and the host country would be stuck with them. Here is an example of the difficulty of repatriating illegal Chinese immigrants.
Eric Raymond predicts that a good old-fashioned war may be the answer.
I’ve also heard there are significant numbers of Chinese men who go on special trips to Vietnam or Laos or one of the poorer countries to get foreign brides. The women benefit from having a more economically comfortable life in China. The men benefit from getting wives unavailable in China.
It’s also good if you want to recruit potential terrorists.