And more in the news regarding China - and girls....

[kyburg]

BEIJING - China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women in less than 15 years as a gender imbalance resulting in part from the country's tough one-child policy becomes more pronounced, state media reported Friday. Traditional preferences for sons has led to the widespread - but illegal - practice of women aborting babies if an early term sonogram shows it is a girl.

Or - you abandon the female baby and she ends up dead, in an orphanage or adopted internationally.

Since we just saw the changes in the China program over the holiday, I make this prediction.

You want a wife in the next 15 years, you're going to go to an orphanage to get one.

Comments

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

Or they resort (as they are already doing) to kidnapping and human trafficking and forced marriages.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

I've never understood that mentality. I picture a nation of batchelor males someday (or gay ones).

[miwasatoshi.livejournal.com]

Saw this coming ten years ago. :/

[western-slope.livejournal.com]

Interesting notion. But it looks like they're nearly at that point right now.

According to Historycentral.com, out of a current population of 1.284 billion people, 68.4% (878 million) are between the ages of 15 and 64, which might be considered "marriageable age." Of those folks, there are 452,354,428 males and 426,055,713 females. That's a male/female mismatch of more than 26 million. (That mismatch is probably due, as you and the article point out, to Chinese cultural practices which support having boy babies instead of girls.)

'Course, you need to keep in mind the sheer numbers we're talking about and what they really mean. In the U.S., 30 million is about 10% of the total population. In China, the 26 million figure quoted is less than three percent of the marriage age population.