FRUITS OF “ONE CHILD:” China Needs Women!

China’s vast population of unmarried men is sure to pose an array of challenges for China, and perhaps its neighbors, for decades to come. What’s already clear is that fraudulent mail-order wives are only the start of a much larger problem. . . . Of course, social expectations aren’t just confined to boys. In China, daughters are expected to marry up — and in a country where men far outnumber women, the opportunities to do so are excellent, especially in the cities to which so many of China’s rural women move. The result is that bride prices — essentially dowries paid to the families of daughters — are rising, especially in the countryside. One 2011 study on bride prices found that they’d increased seventy-fold between the 1960s and 1990s in just one representative, rural hamlet. It’s a society-wide problem, but particularly in China’s countryside, where sex ratios are much wider, and the lack of affluence drives out young, marriageable women. These twin factors have given rise to what’s widely known as “bachelor villages” — thousands of small towns and hamlets across China overflowing with single men, with few women.

Sounds like a recipe for unrest.