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Comment by teyc | Hacker News Reader

There will be change, but not necessarily bad.

1. The lack of marriageable women is a problem that can be solved by time. Men are prepared to marry at 40 if their work prospects are good.

2. The advent of low trust societies that doesn't rely on guanxi, but on merit can be a boon rather than a detriment. Cronyism can only go that far in a society where all are alone.

3. The absence of economic growth is a political one. In an overpopulated country, there is no such thing as sustainable growth. Whereas in the past, there are wars, disease, famine and mass slaughter to reset the population numbers, controlling fertility is the least worst option, and one that can be done voluntarily.

4. Looking after the aged is a necessity in the ages of pre-mechanization. Today, the basic needs of many can be provided by a few.

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> The lack of marriageable women is a problem that can be solved by time. Men are prepared to marry at 40 if their work prospects are good.

This is a very naive conclusion. Human societies deal reasonably well with a large female:male ratio (usually after a war) but large male:female ratios usually leads to war, revolution, or unpleasant social changes like fast increases in violent crime rates and similar problems. This has happened in the past on smaller scales, but in this case you are talking about regions with 10s of millions of young men who have almost no chance at reaching the societal norm of a wife and child -- they are not going to be pleased when the reality of the situation starts to make itself apparent.

If men are prepared to wait until they are older and richer then you will find this cohort out-competing their younger, poorer peers for an ever-dwindling supply of young women. This just leads to a repetition of the cycle but with more and more competitors fighting over the pool of "resources."

This is not a situation that is just going to fix itself unless there is a radical change to family planning laws, societal norms, the role of women, etc. The only thing that can really be said is that the solution will be painful and its consequences could end up being quite far-reaching...

You haven't been to China have you.

Do you have any idea how many women from Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. etc. etc. are DESPERATE to get into China? SOLELY for the purpose of latching onto a man? Even African women are trying to get in on the action.

Student visa my @$$! Not unless they are studying for an M-R-S degree!

I have seen this first hand.

A shortage of 30 or 40 million women?

Believe me when I tell you . . . the Chinese Government knows this won't be a problem.

It really won't. Believe me.

So then the problem is exported to other countries. Two of those countries you just named have fundamentalist Islamist elements.

Islamic countries have already had this problem - what do you do when rich, powerful men have 4 wives, and female children are lower priority for food, medical care, etc, so there are already fewer of them and extra-marital sex is frowned on?

Well, many of those young men band together and go and live in the mountains... We call them Taliban.

Korean women are desperate to get into China?

I doubt it. Koreans look down on Chinese. They view them as dirty and uncouth.

Korea is a far richer country than China. There is no economic reason to migrate there.

North Korea is richer than China?

Are you serious, or is your comment meant to be facetious?

This is the comment I was replying to:

Do you have any idea how many women from Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. etc. etc. are DESPERATE to get into China? SOLELY for the purpose of latching onto a man?

North Korea is essentially a closed country. Of the few North Koreans that manage to escape, how many of them do you think are escaping primarily to find a husband?

I'd say none of them.

I probably should have specified South Korea originally. But the specification isn't really needed due to the closed nature of the north.

As for South Koreans, my original comment still stands. South Koreans look down on Chinese.

I have been to China, but not to the regions we are talking about (and given your response I doubt you have been to these areas either.) While I am certain there are many women desperate to get into China for an MRS degree, I am also certain that they are looking for an educated upwardly-mobile man who has good future prospects; these women are not trying to get into China so that they can marry a poor, unskilled rural worker whose condition is no better than the one they left in the first place. It is this latter group who are screwed in this situation. These men have little to offer a prospective mate and the smaller pool of women have no need to settle for a local villager when they can gain the benefits of supply & demand working in their favor. Please explain why women from surrounding countries would consider a cross-cultural marriage to a man whose general poverty matches their own...

"Never fight a land war in Asia." ...unless you have 30 million single, angsty, poorly educated men...

The one thing that they don't mention is the female children that are abandoned so that the parents can try for a son (due to cultural preference for a son to be the family successor and support the parents in old age). (i.e. not aborted, but born and then abandoned; causing the need for orphanages to take them in)

There is no inexpensive way to check the sex of a child before it is too late to abort?

I assume that maybe the abortion is too expensive or the check is. This might only be happening in rural (i.e. poor) areas. I don't know all of the details.

In the example that I saw of one of these orphanages, the girls were all in their teens. Maybe this is a problem of the past (due to newer tech)?

Portable ultrasound machines is the reason. Now it is cheap and easy to determine fetus gender, rather than waiting for the child to be born before you decide to abandon it.

Yeah it's rather difficult to check the sex of a child before it's conceived.

it is illegal in china to check the sex of an unborn child (of course if you pay enough at private clinics, you can still do it). Public hospitals probably will not dare to do it.

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