"Xiao San" = 小三
Yes, mistresses exist everywhere in the world, but the alarming sign from China is how widespread it is. Anybody who owns a semi-successful business, or holds a mildly important government post, would more likely than not to have a mistress.
I want to try to combine these issues, economy, technology and polygamy/monogamy:
Mistresses/concubines/numbered wifes/harem reflect only official legal arrangements of polygamy.
Polygamy can pay off for the mistress if there's a huge wealth gap between the shared wealth she can achieve as second wife in comparison to a monogamous first wife arrangement with a partner available to her (status, wealth, education, beauty). Otherwise polygamy, especially if widespread, is from an economic perspective a worse trade than monogamy, at least for all but the first wife (if she has an official dominance role). The reason for uneconomic mistress choices can be love or quick gains, but status of men eligible also plays a very important role.
In Tunisia for example the problems of a large number of young, even educated, males not eligible as partners because of status and economic opportunity suppression (bribes and racketeering) led to a violent outbreak. To a lesser degree some European Eastern Block countries had similar mechanics of mistresses adjunct to people with power in opaque regimes with lots of bribery and black markets in the late days.
Part of the game of having the polygamy advantage is surpressing the competition by fair and foul means, very similar to bullying. Mistresses are a kind of alignment due to her optimal choices under the status quo. Naturally, this can cause severe tensions towards equality, including toppling all gouvernments. At the same time it's true that mistresses have less children if their position is more connected to status than wealth choices.
It may sound strange to some, but European monogamy, with limited polygamy, was closer to the economic ideal of providing most wealth for one woman's offspring and fostering economic growth by individual initiative with direct pay-offs in a small partnership of two heterosexual adults and their minor aged offspring. This resulted in the population growth leading to European ascendancy (very slowly from at least 1000 AD onwards) and was opposed to the previous more polygamous and extended family under one roof with one economy centered models.
What does this have to do with technology?
Europe was split among small competing "tribes" while China was most of the time one united large tribe - nation. Inventions with similar applications were made on both sides or even exchanged between them if the other side was interested. There were lots of things the Chinese were not interested in, something that lacked the other way round, where each of the "tribes"/small political entities had formed a very similar culture that tried to outcompete each other in splendor and novelities with top down influences via servants and the burgeoise upstarts.
China might even have had a cutting edge with early inventions and applications, but it did not foster the same economy and outlook on perspectives. Rising, as mentioned before, was not associated with wealth through trade or plunder (the merchant, the pirate, the warrior) or steady work of the peasant or the craftsman (the craftsman became the industrialist and paid some peasants handy for their lands, making them part of the small or medium capitalists). Peasant and craftsman are not mutually exclusive and as time developed, the shift was increasingly to less agriculture and more crafts.
China by contrast had people rising in status, rather not wealth, that in case of not being inherited and combined with recognition of education, seems to have attained little standing as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong). In this aspect China has a resemblance to the Catholic countries that are still less developed than the Protestant countries because
made achieving wealth something positive.
A woman, who wanted or was driven to have a good/better partner, had the choice between certified scholars or certified scholars and some certified officers (the last one eliminetad by introducing a closed ethnic group nobility). This polygamy had a status direction, while in Europe it had a wealth direction, giving monogamy more of a competitive edge. The status direction in my opinion could make this phenomena more widespread than the wealth difference would have warranted by calculating women (they exist, just like calculating men).
On the wider perspective this limits male competition to becoming a scholar or getting enough for the offspring to become a scholar (Want to marry me, I have a contract for a private tutor for our offspring?). That totally took out the incentive for economic development beyond the means necessary to be scholar class. This choice possibly bred a nation of very clever people with many scholars among their ancestors, while Europeans were picking up economically and in industry with private vices public benefits (
). From a contemporary Chinese perspective this must have been a highly immoral concept because it was so cunning-merkantile and Confucius interpreters had to disapprove of this barbaric way.
The barbaric way had more incentives for other achievements, including getting a wife, than the Chinese scholars, including the military arts. Then came the day, when the Chinese found out that they weren't masters in all fields any more. After a time of denial, a hysteric devaluation of still existing Chinese outstanding advances followed and now we discuss the opinions shaped by these events.
Anybody wants a mistress?
Thanks for reading my long argument.
