China's Gender Imbalance

airsuperiority · Jul 21, 2011

xywdx said:
Where do I start, first the gender imbalance is in fact overstated, because many of these supposed infanticides are simply cases of parents refusing to register their baby girls in the census. While some older generation Chinese are inclined to want to carry on their name, Chinese parents, especially the fathers, are hardly willing to sacrifice their daughters, they have a strong protective instinct.

Secondly, while we are at the topic of population I might add that the population aging is also overstated, because among the city dwelling Chinese population there is a lot more marital freedom. I know many cases of Chinese woman marrying and having a child with one husband, then divorcing and having a family with another, this is allowed as long as one parent does not have a child. In this sense 3 parents will have 2 children, not only throwing off earlier estimates but also partly offsetting the gender imbalance.

Not true at all, China during the Ming dynasty is the most capitalistic nation on Earth, surpassed by none. The fall of the Ming dynasty was because it became so decentralized that the local capitalists had as much influence regionally as the Emperor. Fatcats were getting fatter by using loopholes to evade taxes and exploiting the people, living standards fell and the dynasty collapsed before a combination of rebels, corruption, traitors, and foreign invasion.

That is the kind of complacency I am afraid of, people(myself included) living without a certain amount of pressure will become unproductive. The current life style in Canada and the US is the result of generations of people working under intense pressure, which is the stage China is at right now. Once China get her per capita GDP to the levels of Canada and US, then they can take a step back and relax.

it happened in hk, and it's bound to happen in china too. i'm talking about the materialism. there are a flux of new part-time models in hk lately, and young girls who will date/have sex with "boyfriends who buy their time"

Spartan95 · Jul 21, 2011

solarz said:
Already, we can see the effect of this imbalance through the huge "dowries" demanded by the brides' family.

I'm curious as to what you guys think of this? Certainly the government will begin to relax family-planning policies and even encourage giving birth to girls, but those policies will take decades to revert the effect, and we will still be left with a generation's worth of gender imbalance. What do you think will be the effect of this on society?

1 of the curious incidents I came face-to-face with during 1 of my vacations to PRC was that of my female tour-guide who happened to break off with her boyfriend on her 2nd day bringing me around. She wasn't particularly sad about it and she was running through the list of potential boyfriends soon enough (she eventually decided on a PLA officer).

What struck me about this incident is that due to the gender imbalance, the females call the shots as to who they want to have a relationship with because they have no lack of suitors. This is a very significant effect on Chinese society which is traditionally male-dominated.

solarz said:
Western sources prophesies Doom and Gloom, but I think that it will start a trend of men marrying later in life and to younger brides. As we know, women seek a financially secure husband, which tends to be an advantage that older men have over younger men.

Doom and gloom is overstated.

1 of the ways to overcome this is throw mail-order-brides from other countries, which has been happening and appears to be a booming business now.

airsuperiority said:
it happened in hk, and it's bound to happen in china too. i'm talking about the materialism. there are a flux of new part-time models in hk lately, and young girls who will date/have sex with "boyfriends who buy their time"

The pursuit of materialism can be quite extreme indeed. Here's an example:

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Chinese teen offers virginity for white iPhone 4
By Yahoo! Singapore
PostsBy Yahoo! Singapore | What’s buzzing? – Sat, Jul 2, 2011

By Steven Millward, Penn-Olson

A mainland Chinese teenage girl has been caught on Weibo in the act of selling her virginity — for a white iPhone 4.

The girl has been identified by Hong Kong's branch of NextMedia as only surnamed Wen (pictured right), from Maoming city of south China's Guangdong province. She stated in her post that her "valuable first night" — which literally means 'virginity' in Chinese — was worth the gifting of a white iPhone 4, which retails in China for RMB 4,999 for the 16-gigabyte model.

The girl, Wen, then gave out her QQ number, and encouraged young men to contact her if they were serious about the deal.

Of course, it's possible that this is a publicity stunt by a young woman who's keen to become famous. Come to think of it, that might actually be preferable to someone selling their body in some way in exchange for a soon-to-be-obsolete gadget.

My kidney for any iPad

Sadly, this isn't the sole incident of this nature this month: a few weeks ago a 17-year old Chinese boy went so far as to have a kidney removed so that he could sell it to buy an iPad 2, as reported by my colleague, Rick.

This story is provided courtesy of Penn-Olson.

airsuperiority · Jul 21, 2011

Spartan95 said:
1 of the curious incidents I came face-to-face with during 1 of my vacations to PRC was that of my female tour-guide who happened to break off with her boyfriend on her 2nd day bringing me around. She wasn't particularly sad about it and she was running through the list of potential boyfriends soon enough (she eventually decided on a PLA officer).

What struck me about this incident is that due to the gender imbalance, the females call the shots as to who they want to have a relationship with because they have no lack of suitors. This is a very significant effect on Chinese society which is traditionally male-dominated.

Doom and gloom is overstated.

1 of the ways to overcome this is throw mail-order-brides from other countries, which has been happening and appears to be a booming business now.

The pursuit of materialism can be quite extreme indeed. Here's an example:

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that's the effects of materialism and the combination of sexual messages in the mainstream media. although cultures like china may be a bit less severe victim AT THE MOMENT, it is by no means a healthy phenomenon(and will only get worse), as other cultures and society, including Japan, SK, HK, Taiwan, and probably much of the Western world, already have these phenomenon and much more more prominent. For that I do think the mainstream media's sexualized messages are one of the major culprit, and American culture(American culture as in MTV, music, film, entertainment, and that types of stuff)

solarz · Jul 22, 2011

Spartan95 said:
1 of the curious incidents I came face-to-face with during 1 of my vacations to PRC was that of my female tour-guide who happened to break off with her boyfriend on her 2nd day bringing me around. She wasn't particularly sad about it and she was running through the list of potential boyfriends soon enough (she eventually decided on a PLA officer).

What struck me about this incident is that due to the gender imbalance, the females call the shots as to who they want to have a relationship with because they have no lack of suitors. This is a very significant effect on Chinese society which is traditionally male-dominated.

Not every girl has a long list of suitors.

The pursuit of materialism can be quite extreme indeed. Here's an example:

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I don't think that is so much an effect of materialism as two kids being immature dumbasses.

China's Gender Imbalance

airsuperiority

Captain

Spartan95

Junior Member

airsuperiority

Captain

solarz

Brigadier