
Chinese Bias for Baby Boys Creates a Gap of 32 Million  - peter123
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/world/asia/11china.html
======
feverishaaron
I wouldn't be surprised if China started to become more aggressive militarily
as this generation enters the proper age. An imbalance of men that don't have
mates has caused problems for societies in the past, and they solved those
problems by putting all of this pent up aggression to use.

~~~
Retric
It's not a binary issue, and you can't just say A > B = problems.

There are ~1.3 billion Chinese, but let's assume the this issue covers 1/3 of
the population. So it's (1300/3 + 32/2) vs (1300/3 - 32/2) which works out to
4350:4318. Now we might guess that there will be large numbers of men that
don't ever have a relationship. But, what people forget is relationships don't
always last. People die, or get divorced ect. So what ends up happening is
women will spend a higher percentage of their life in a relationship and while
some men will never marry this is "normal" and they can still have
relationship with women throughout their lives.

If anything expect women to marry younger and female widows to be in higher
demand than males widows. Granted, if the male to female ratio ever reached
2:1 there would be issues but this is still a minor imbalance.

~~~
aristus
This imbalance is very common around the world. I don't understand why the
press gets so anxious about it re: China. India has a similar surplus, like 20
million extra boys in the 0-14 range.

In places like South America there is often an imbalance favoring males before
age 15 which shifts over to females from age 20 onwards. It doesn't mean war
or revolution -- just a lot of urban violence and early deaths of males as
they compete for mates. It's not pretty but neither is it a dire international
problem.

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jhancock
The problem is most preventable in rural areas and the cities more to the
west. Places like Shanghai don't have such an imbalance.

The more likely solution, as opposed to using them for wars, it they get used
for domestic construction projects: highways, railroads, etc. This has already
been the case.

China is working hard on this problem. Its illegal to know the sex of a child
during pregnancy. Some get around the issue, but I have personally seen it
upheld pretty well. I knew the sex of my child before he was born, in
Shanghai. But I was only allowed to know because I was an American and was in
a hospital that catered to foreigners. The locals seem to have mostly settled
in on the fact that they aren't supposed to know.

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diN0bot
I recently learned about the Mosuo, which have no gender bias.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo>

~~~
benhoyt
Very interesting.

However, this kind of thing: _"Most significantly, when children are born, the
father may have little or no responsibility for his offspring..."_ \-- that's
terrible.

That WP paragraph "Walking marriages" somehow reminds me of Heinlein's "The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Harsh indeed.

~~~
dangoldin
Well the child doesn't have the actual father as a parent but he/she does have
the males of the family. It's just a different way of raising kids as a
community that we just aren't used to.

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irinotecan
32 million disenfranchised men, unable to find a wife, and start a family in
18 or so years?

The stuff that revolutions are made of.

~~~
kurtosis
I've heard this theory floated before. The people proposing it have a good
point. They have to find something to do with all of these young men or
trouble could emerge. I guess an alternative strategy would be to bring back
monasteries. If this is too discordant with the official ideology of the
state, they could send them to graduate school in science. ;|

~~~
Rod
_"If this is too discordant with the official ideology of the state, they
could send them to graduate school in science."_

LOLOL. Would be even funnier if it weren't so true:
[http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-
intelligenc...](http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-
intelligence.php)

A depressing statistic: _"only 65% of MIT graduate students have had sex."_

~~~
nostrademons
There's a fairly obvious explanation that I didn't see mentioned anywhere in
the abstract: assortative mating. People tend to have sex with people of
roughly the same intelligence, socioeconomic status, and interests. As you go
down the tails of the bell curve, there are fewer people of the same
intelligence with similar interests.

If you have an IQ of 100, 68% of the population is within one standard
deviation of you. Your chances of meeting someone you feel comfortable with in
high school are pretty high. But if you have an IQ of 145 (3 stddev), only
about 3% of the population is within one standard deviation of intelligence of
you. Add to that the constraints of it being a member of your preferred sex,
being reasonably attractive & socially compatible, and wanting to have sex,
and it's no surprise that most such people don't find suitable mates until
they enter college, which purposely brings together people of similar
intelligence.

And if you have an IQ of 175 (5 stddev), less than 1 in 10,000 people is
within one standard deviation of intelligence. (Though this is a bit
meaningless, as IQ distribution has fat tails when you get past about 145.)
Then add in that super-intelligent people often have very narrow and deep
interests, and that males are overrepresented on both ends of the bell curve
(there are both more male morons and male geniuses than female ones).

This also explains why the smartest men were most likely to hire a prostitute.
If they had no chance of forming an emotional connection with a woman, why not
pay her to leave afterwards?

Personally, I had about zero interest in 90% of girls in college. They were
just inane. And this is at Amherst, which already selects for pretty smart
people.

~~~
Rod
That's an interesting analysis, but I disagree on some points. My ideas:

1) people tend to have sex with people of roughly the same attractiveness.
Only a fool would fail to realize that there's a sexual market out there, and
one's price in that market is mostly dictated by looks, not intelligence or
interests. (disclaimer: I live in Southern California, and I realize that I
may sound overly superficial).

2) Sex and stable romantic relationships are way different things. It's true
that people tend to start relationships with people of roughly the same
intelligence, socioeconomic status, and interests... but come on! I would not
turn down a funny, hot girl just because she's an English major who's not
interested at all in Quantum Field Theory! I probably would not want to marry
her, but some NSA fun once in a while is refreshing...

3) Grad students at MIT should be rather smart, driven people. They should be
surrounded by people of the same intelligence and interests, and they still
don't get laid much. Your cute analysis does not explain this.

~~~
nostrademons
1.) I think it's both. People have sex with folks of the same attractiveness,
but they don't _ignore_ intelligence. Could you imagine an MIT grad student
having sex with a trailer-trash bimbo of slightly-below-average
attractiveness? (Yeah, that's a bad mental picture.)

3.) They've had less time to be surrounded by people of similar intelligence
and interests. The virgin rate among MIT grad students is roughly the same as
the virgin rate among average high schoolers. That's consistent with the
hypothesis that MIT-caliber grad students can't find anyone until they get to
MIT, and then they follow the normal rules of chance & dating & random hookups
that most people do in high school.

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RK
A doctor friend of mine told me about removing contraceptive IUD's from
Chinese women who are living in the US and now want to have more kids. The
IUD's are designed to be permanent (not the same as US IUD's) and the women
are forced to get them after they've reached their child quota in China. The
interesting thing is that some doctors outside China probably perform more of
these removal procedures than Chinese doctors ever do.

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mattmaroon
"Nothing can be done now to prevent this" That's not true. Nothing that
wouldn't land someone in the Hague maybe.

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tokenadult
There is a long Chinese cultural preoccupation with having legitimate
descendants who will carry on the clan line (that is, have the same surname as
the father). This is expressed in Shang era bronzes from almost 3,000 years
ago that I have seen in museums. The inscriptions on the cast bronze objects,
which were often given as rewards to faithful subjects who achieved glory in
battle or the like, include expressions of a wish to have children and
grandchildren for countless generations.

The common saying is

不孝有三，無後為大

[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B8%8D%E5%AD%9D%E6%9C%89%E4...](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B8%8D%E5%AD%9D%E6%9C%89%E4%B8%89%EF%BC%8C%E7%84%A1%E5%BE%8C%E7%82%BA%E5%A4%A7)

indicating that the very worst way that a child can be disobedient to a parent
is to not give the parent descendants.

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nopinsight
If the law of supply and demand also applies in this market, the boys-girls
gap in the next generation would be smaller.

However, given the thousands-years cultural norm that prefer boys over girls,
it's likely the gap will likely persist for a long time to come.

Anyone has some ideas on what to do with this problem?

~~~
dmoney
Induce another large country, e.g. India, to prefer baby girls.

~~~
ced
Surprisingly, India also has an unbalanced ratio, and AFAIK, the root problem
is the same: cultural.

Sex Ratio: At birth: 1.12 male(s)/female under 15 years: 1.098 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.061 male(s)/female

[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/04/country_facts/main...](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/04/country_facts/main3328865.shtml)

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raintrees
Wouldn't this also have an impact on China's morality laws? Maybe this will
push same-sex relationships and all of the accompanying impacts (child
rearing, financial planning, legal contract/consideration) to the forefront
far faster than would otherwise occur...

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3pt14159
The anti-war solution? Monogamy is probably out the window.

\- "Full service" Chinese sperm banks (mildly nsfw)
[http://www.inquisitr.com/20953/sperm-donation-in-china-
comes...](http://www.inquisitr.com/20953/sperm-donation-in-china-comes-with-a-
special-touch/) \- Special friends (like Japan)
[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070313230107AA...](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070313230107AAlIVdC)
\- Robots

Better (and cheaper) than the alternative.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Read the comments on the first link, it's a fake.

------
est
It's not Chinese bias, it's one-child policy bias against the Han Chinese

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bint
So in other words -- 32 million baby girls were murdered.

One Day, severe Justice will be served to these people.

