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The Women's Federation columns on sheng nu all share the same goal: convince single, educated women to stop being so ambitious and get married already:
The main reason many girls become "leftover women" is that their standards for a partner are too high ... As girls are not too picky, finding a partner should be as easy as blowing away a speck of dust.
Some of the columns have been reposted several times over the years and list helpful tips, such as "seduce but don't pester" and "be persistent but not willful":
When holding out for a man, if you say he must be rich and brilliant, romantic and hardworking ... this is just being willful. Does this kind of perfect man exist? Maybe he does exist, but why on earth would he want to marry you?
Since 2008, local population planning commissions in cities such as Nanjing and Ningbo have carried out "interventions" to address the "leftover women crisis." Local Women's Federation branches have arranged matchmaking events for "highly educated, high-quality" women. This March there was a drive in Pinghu, Zhejiang Province, for "leftover women to speedily find conjugal happiness."

And once a "leftover" woman finds marital bliss, what should she do if her husband has an affair?

The Women's Federation comes to the rescue, with the headline, "Faced With A Marital Crisis, Women Need to Improve Themselves":
When you find out that he is having an affair, you may be in a towering rage, but you must know that if you make a fuss, you are denying the man "face" ... No man is capable of spending a lifetime being loyal to an outmoded wife who never changes ... Try changing your hairstyle or your fashion. Women must constantly change for the better.
In short, it's the woman's fault for refusing to get married, and once she is married, it's the woman's fault if her husband has an affair. Of course.
Leta Hong Fincher is an American doctoral student in Tsinghua University's Department of Sociology.

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The Women's Federation columns on sheng nu all share the same goal: convince single, educated women to stop being so ambitious and get married already: The main reason many girls become "leftover women" is that their standards for a partner are too high ...

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Jane GOLLEY

Centre for China in the World
Australian National University

Rod TYERS

Business School
University of Western Australia, and
Research School of Economics
Australian National University

August 2012

Key words:
China, growth, demography, sex ratio, imbalance

JEL codes:
D58, J11, J13, J16, J21
Abstract
Chinese GDP growth faces rising challenges that include the slowdown and eventual contraction of its labour force, a complication of which is its rising sex ratio at birth. The undesirable consequences of the resulting gender imbalance include excessive savings as families with boys compete to match their sons with scarce girls, trafficking in women and rising disaffection and crime amongst the low-skill unmarried male population. These consequences are reviewed and analysed using a dynamic model of both economic and demographic behaviour. The results show that the proportion of unmatched low-skill males of reproductive age could be as high as one in four by 2030. Policies to rebalance the sex ratio at birth will take decades to reduce the sex ratio at reproductive age and any associated allowance for higher fertility would slow growth in real per capita income. Yet the results suggest that the beneficial effects of reduced male disaffection and crime could outweigh the losses from reduced saving and higher population.
1. Introduction
According to the United Nation's (UN) Population Prospects 2010 revision, China's sex ratio at birth (SRB) reached 120 (male births per 100 female births) in 2005-10, compared with a world average of 107. This earned China first place on the global ranking of imbalanced sex ratios at birth, a rank it has held since the mid-1980s when the SRB first moved into the "abnormal range" (see Figure 1). Sub-national figures are even more alarming, with the 1% inter-census survey in 2005 revealing six provinces that recorded sex ratios over 130 for the 1-4 age group, and nine provinces that exceeded 160 for second-order births (Zhu et al., 2009). Compounding China's gender imbalances are its rates of excess female child mortality (EFCM), which are measured by comparing the normal ratio of male to female child mortality (of between 120 and 130 for infants between birth and age one) with the observed ratios. In 2005 these were "severely abnormal" at 80 for children in the first year of life and 84 for children in their second year (Li, 2007). While women in China, as elsewhere, have higher life expectancies than men, the combination of high SRBs and high EFCM has left China with the world's highest sex ratio in the total population, at 108 and rising in 2005-10, compared with the global average of 101 (United Nations, 2010).

These gender imbalances have resulted in substantial numbers of "missing women", a term coined by Amartya Sen in the late 1980s, based on his own research indicating that more than 100 million women were missing worldwide[1]. Klasen and Wink (2003) review the range of estimation techniques used since Sen, and show that the number of women missing in absolute terms has continued to increase worldwide, while the percentage in terms of women alive has fallen. However, in China there has been further deterioration in both absolute and percentage terms, with an estimated 41 million missing women in 2000 or 6.7 per cent of the female population (very similar to those of Li, 2007 and Bulte et al., 2011).

According to demographer Zeng Yi (2007), if China's SRB remains constant and current fertility policy is unchanged, the proportion of excess men aged 20-49 compared to women of the same age will increase from 6% in 2010 to 11% in 2030, peaking at over 14% in 2050. Li and Jiang (2005) project that if SRBs remain at 2000 levels, by 2030 the population size will be 84.2 per cent of what it would be under normal SRB patterns (in the range of 104-107). That is, 15.8% of the population would disappear because of the number of women missing, and the proportion of excess males would reach 20.7 per cent! As with most phenomena relating to China, the issue of rising gender imbalances is taking place on an unprecedented scale, with consequences that extend into all realms of economic, social, and political life.

China's rising gender imbalances are occurring in tandem with the slowdown of China's labour force growth, an issue that has received much attention from economists in recent years (Golley and Tyers 2012a,b, Cai, 2012). By itself, this slowdown brings forward the Lewis "turning point" beyond which the rural to urban transformation proceeds more slowly, constraining future growth.[2] Rising gender imbalances compound this slowdown since, for given fertility levels, the declining share of women further reduces the growth rates of the population and hence the labour force. This is just one of a number of undesirable consequences of gender mismatch, others of which centre on the rising proportion of unmatched males, including excessive saving as families with boys compete to match their sons with scarce girls (Wei and Zhang 2009, 2010), trafficking in women and increased rates of crime (Edlund et al. 2007, Hvistendahl 2011).

In this paper we review prior work on the causes and consequences of China's high SRB and offer a prospective quantification of its effects via simulations using a dynamic model of both economic and demographic behaviour. The baseline simulations show that the number of unmatched males could achieve extreme proportions by 2030, with the proportion of unmatched low-skill males of reproductive age being as high as one in four. The results suggest that an associated crime-induced productivity slowdown would outweigh the increased savings of families with boys and so further retard growth, contributing to the yet-avoidable possibility that China could fall into a "middle income trap" (Easterly 2000, World Bank 2010, Eichengreen et al. 2011). The economic impacts of policies to rebalance the sex ratio at birth will take time, and not all of them will necessarily be positive. Yet the results suggest that the beneficial effects of reduced male disaffection and crime could outweigh the losses from reduced saving and higher population.

The section to follow reviews the growing literature on China's rising SRB and the economic implications of gender imbalances more generally. Section 3 then summarises the simulation model we use, while Section 4 examines the demographic consequences of the gender imbalance and its dependence on trends in the SRB. Section 5 associates the gender mismatch with both aggregate household savings and the productivity effects of low-income male disaffection and crime. Conclusions are offered in Section 6.
2. China's rising gender imbalances: causes, consequences and prospects
Guilmoto (2009) examines the causes of sex imbalances at birth in a range of Asian countries, including China and extending to Azerbaijan, Armenia, Albania and Georgia.[3] Beginning with the observation that son preference is widespread (not only in Asia, but just about everywhere), he identifies three further motivations for deliberate sex selection: "fertility squeeze" (brought about by parents wanting or needing to limit the number of births), "ability" to limit those births (from traditional methods for dealing with unwanted girls through to high tech methods including ultrasound gender identification) and "readiness", which includes the social and legal circumstances that allow parents to take advantage of the birth limiting options available to them.

China clearly checks all the boxes, with a long-standing cultural preference for sons, the introduction of the one-child policy in the early 1980s and the widespread use of Ultrasound B technology to detect gender from the mid-1980s onwards (Ebenstein, Li and Meng, 2010). For Li (2007), the fundamental cause of China's gender imbalance is essentially cultural, tracing to the patrilineal system of the Han Chinese.[4] As he points out, there are numerous socioeconomic factors that help to sustain the traditional preference for sons, including the need for parents to have sons who will support them in retirement, and unequal rights and opportunities for women in terms of education and employment.[5] This point has been acknowledged by Wang Xia, head of China's National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC) who stated in 2012 that "The bias against females in economic, social and cultural fields is still the root cause of the current gender imbalance".[6]

While some research has pointed to the under-reporting of female births in China (which would give a false impression of a large number of 'missing' girls who are in fact just 'hidden'), the bulk of evidence indicates that sex selective abortion is primarily responsible for the rising SRB in recent years and that this rise is indeed very real (Cai and Lavely, 2007, Li, 2007, Ebenstein, 2008 and Zhu et al. 2009). This view appears to have been accepted by the Chinese government, with Wang Xia announcing in 2012 that "the authorities will crack down further on illegal prenatal gender tests and selective abortions, which are believed to be the primary causes of the gender imbalance".[7]

Although strict family planning policies are not a prerequisite for fertility squeeze, they are surely a contributing factor.[8] Based on the 2000 census, Gu et al. (2007) show that China has implemented one-child policies, 1.5 child policies, two-child policies and three-child policies in different parts of the country, giving rise to SRB levels of 112, 125, 109 and 198, respectively. This indicates that two-child policies bring SRBs down to almost normal levels, while the 1.5-child policy, which allows for a second child in rural areas if the first one is a girl, has been even more detrimental to China's SRB than the one-child policy itself.

While Chinese officials are reticent to attribute rising gender imbalances to their family planning policies, they are well aware that the associated problems are looming large. In 2004, following an announcement by the then head of China's NPFPC, Zhang Weiqing, that males of marriage age would outnumber females by 30 million by 2020, Li Weixiong, vice-chairman of the Population, Resources and Environment committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) stated that "Such serious gender disproportion poses a major threat to the healthy, harmonious and sustainable growth of the nation's population and would trigger such crimes and social problems as mercenary marriage, abduction of women and prostitution." [9] Similarly, Hudson and den Boer explicitly link rising gender imbalances and domestic social conflict in their 2004 book entitled " Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population " ("bare branches" being the Chinese term used to describe unmarried men without children) and in another 2008 article in which they argue that "a society with a masculinized young adult population, such as China's, is likely to respond to significant economic hardship with severe domestic instability and crime". Edlund et al. (2007, 2010) show that a 0.01 increase in the sex ratio caused a three per cent increase in property and violent crimes in China between 1988 and 2004, indicating that the rise in surplus males may account for up to one-sixth of the overall rise in crime during this period. While this does not validate all of Hudson and den Boer's claims (some of which are alarmist and speculative), it does indicate that the domestic costs of China's gender imbalances could be substantial.

There may also be numerous indirect costs associated with having a growing number of unmarried men in Chinese society. Anthropological studies have shown that men in societies with large numbers of surplus men will engage in non-productive and risky "wife-seeking" behaviour, sacrificing their own productivity and paternal investments that would have raised their children's future productivity as well (Henrich et al., 2012). In addition to these productivity losses, unmarried men also suffer from poorer physical and psychological health, with one recent study showing that unmarried Chinese men are 11% less likely to describe themselves as being in good health than married men (Ebenstein and Sharygin, 2009, Zhou et al. 2011).

Korenman and Neumark (1991) point out that if marriage really does make men more productive, as their analysis of US data suggests, then "changes in marital status composition potentially can affect the productivity of the labor force" (p. 283).[10] However, it is not obvious how these changes will play out in aggregate in the Chinese context. Edlund et al's (2010) evidence that higher sex ratios in China are associated with higher educational attainment and wages for men on average, and lower educational attainment for women on average, supports the notion that men may invest more heavily in characteristics to make them competitive in the marriage market, while women may choose to invest less. They also show, however, that higher sex ratios increase the variance of men's labour market outcomes, which they put down to a "hetereogenous incentive effect where men with low initial endowments choose to engage in crime" (p.17). Thus it seems clear that the impact of rising sex ratios varies significantly across different members of society, both within and between the sexes. However, it is unclear what the aggregate impact will be in terms of productivity, wages, educational attainment, and other factors that impact on long-term growth performance.

Savings is one factor for which the aggregate impact is clear, at least according to a recent string of papers that links China's rising sex ratio to its rising saving rates. Wei and Zhang (2009) show that the rise in China's sex ratio explains half of the increase in Chinese household savings as a share of disposable income (from 16 per cent in 1990 to 30 per cent in 2007), consistent with Du and Wei's (2010) theory of "male excess savings", which arises in the context of a steady increase in the ratio of men to women as men seek to be competitive in the marriage market. Wei and Zhang (2010) also show that the sex ratio imbalance stimulates entrepreneurial activities as men are driven to increase their wealth, providing evidence that men in regions with relatively high gender imbalances are more willing to accept dangerous and unpleasant jobs and supply more hours of work. This boosts private sector growth, suggesting that not only household, but also corporate savings are higher as a consequence. Du and Wei (2012) describe further how the increase in savings and the expansion of the supply of male workers both put downward pressure on the real exchange rate (assuming that non-tradables are more labour intensive in China and that tradable prices are determined in world markets). This mechanism feeds into Du and Wei's (2010) overlapping generation model, which they use to demonstrate the link between China's gender imbalances and the current account surpluses and deficits of China and the United States respectively, and which leads them to conclude that although "The sex ratio imbalance is not the sole reason for global imbalances, it could be one of the significant, and yet thus far unrecognised, factors" (page 2).

Given the potentially gargantuan impacts that China's gender imbalances could have on the domestic and global economies, it is worth considering whether they are likely to be self-correcting, through evolutionary, economic, social or other means. Evolutionary biologists have proposed an "adaptive sex ratio adjustment hypothesis", in which healthy, well-nourished and high-status mothers are more likely to give birth to sons, whereas unhealthy, poorly nourished and low-status mothers are more likely to give birth to daughters. Song (2012) finds evidence of this hypothesis in the abrupt decline in China's sex ratio at birth during the Great Leap Forward famine. Rob Brooks (2012) explains how this hypothesis can bring about a more balanced sex ratio in societies where hypergamy[11] is common, as high-status (rich) mothers give birth to more sons who match up with the relatively large number of daughters born to low-status (poor) mothers. However, the ready availability of ultrasound technology throughout China, combined with strong son preference, suggests that this kind of balance is unlikely to emerge naturally, short of another serious famine, which is hardly a solution worth counting on. Most critically, the concentration of unmatched males in lower socioeconomic groups may have serious social consequences, an idea we explore further below.

Becker (2007) places his trust in the market, arguing that "As children become adults in cohorts with a high ratio of boys, the advantage of girls and women increases since they are scarcer" so it is men and not women at a disadvantage as the value of women rises and value of men falls. Qian (2008) finds some evidence of this in her analysis that shows that a rising sex ratio leads to higher female income and higher survival rates among girls. She estimates that if annual rural household income could be augmented by 10% and given entirely to the household's women, the fraction of girls would rise by 1.3 percentage points. Becker goes on to defend sex selection of births because the market will correct for it in the long run, essentially advocating a laissez faire approach to China's gender problem.[12] While other scholars recognise a range of socioeconomic forces that tend to level out sex ratios over time, Murphy et al. (2011) show that these are having very little impact in rural China to date because of female disadvantages in land rights, wages and education. [13] In other words, the long-run market solution to gender imbalances has not emerged just yet.

The Chinese government evidently has less faith in the market than Becker, and has recently identified reducing the SRB as a national priority, aiming for 115 newborn males for every 100 females by 2015.[14] Numerous efforts to improve women's rights and promote gender equality with a view to lowering the SRB and improving girl survival rates have already been undertaken, including the "Care for Girls" campaign, first introduced in the Chaohu Experimental Zone in 2000, and then in the entire country from the beginning of 2006 (Li, 2007). Officials have credited the fall in the official SRB between 2009 and 2011, from 119.5 to 117.8, to their recent crackdowns on illegal prenatal gender tests and selective abortions, while acknowledging that enhanced efforts to promote equal opportunities and the social status of females are fundamental solutions to the problem.[15] These points notwithstanding, it remains to be seen whether, and how, the 2015 SRB target will be achieved.

One option being discussed, by academics at least, is to relax the current fertility policy. Zeng (2007) argues that the economic and social costs of maintaining China's current fertility policy (which he refers to as a 1.5-child policy) are too high, with the consequences of the sex ratio imbalance being prominent among those costs. Compared with the worst-case scenario of a constant SRB and "current policy unchanged", his preferred policy of a "two-children with late childbearing soft-landing"[16] would see the SRB normalise by 2030, with the number of excess men peaking in 2040 and returning to normal by 2050. While the official stance regarding current fertility policy indicates that such a policy relaxation is not yet supported,[17] these results are indicative of the potential impact that alternative fertility policies could have on China's gender problem.

Finally, it is worth noting that large variations in the broader sex ratios of human populations are not uncommon in history, with low values occurring when disproportionate numbers of males have been lost in wars and other disasters. Extraordinarily high values have also occurred when humans have expanded into new territories, including in Australia and California during the gold rushes of the 19 th Century.[18] In these cases, gender imbalances were righted by subsequent female immigration from regions with much larger populations. This is unlikely to provide a solution for China, however, given the sheer size of the problem.
3. Modelling the impact of gender imbalances on economic performance
Given ongoing debates regarding both the causes and consequences of China's rising gender imbalances, in combination with uncertainty about the pace at which nature and/or nurture might reduce these imbalances, it is clearly impossible to predict China's gender structure in the future, let alone what the economic impacts of that structure will be. Instead, we turn to a modelling exercise aims to shed light on some, although admittedly not all, of the issues introduced in Section 2.

The economic model we use is a development of GTAP-Dynamic, the standard version of which has single households in each region and therefore no demographic structure. The approach adopted here follows Tyers and Shi (2007), in that a complete demographic sub-model is integrated within a dynamic numerical model of the global economy. The model enables us to project changes since 1997 in population and labour force levels, gender imbalances, dependency ratios, real GDP and wage levels and the levels of real per capita income in the countries represented through to 2030.

Each region represented in the model includes four age groups, two genders, and two skill categories, for a total of 16 population groups in each of 18 regions, two of which are Mainland China and India. The four age groups are the dependent young, adults of fertile and working age, older working adults, and the mostly retired over 60s. The skill subdivision is between households that provide unskilled (production) labour and those that provide skilled (professional) labour.[19] Each age-gender-skill group is a homogeneous subpopulation with group-specific birth and death rates and rates of both immigration and emigration. If the group spans T years, the survival rate to the next age group is the fraction 1/T of its population, after group-specific deaths have been removed and its population has been adjusted for net migration.

The final age group (60+) has duration equal to measured life expectancy at 60, which varies across genders and regions. So the narrowly demographic parameters are birth rates, sex ratios at birth, age-gender specific death, immigration and emigration rates, and life expectancies at 60.[20] The birth rates, sex ratios at birth, life expectancy at 60, and age-specific death rates all trend through time, approaching exogenous targets asymptotically.

The economic component of the model considers each region to contribute seven industries: agriculture, light manufacturing, heavy manufacturing, metals, energy, minerals and services. To reflect compositional differences between regions and failures of the "law of one price", these products are differentiated by region of origin, meaning that the "light manufactures" produced in one region are not the same as those produced in others. Consumers and firms purchasing intermediates substitute imperfectly between manufactures from different regions.[21] Regions have open capital accounts with empirically-based investment biases and trade distortions.

To capture the full effects of demographic change, the multiple age, gender, and skill groups are modelled as separate households. These 16 groups differ in their shares of regional disposable income, consumption preferences, saving rates, and their labour supply behaviour. While the consumption-savings choice therefore differs for each age-gender group, it is dependent for all on current group-specific real per capita disposable income and the real lending rate.[22]

As in other dynamic models of the global economy, the main endogenous driver of simulated economic growth is physical capital accumulation.[23] Technical change is introduced in the form of exogenous productivity growth that is sector and factor specific. The overall rate of economic growth proves quite sensitive to these exogenous shocks since the larger these are for a particular region the larger is that region's marginal product of capital. The region therefore enjoys higher levels of investment and hence higher marginal products of labour and real wages. This causes a double boost to its per capita real income growth rate. For China the continuing productivity shocks are at levels that are high compared with the other regions.

The model has the Solow-Swan property, shared with all neoclassical dynamic models that embody diminishing returns to factor use, that an increase in the growth rate of the population raises the growth rate of real GDP but reduces the level of real per capita income. What distinguishes it from its simpler progenitors is its multiple households, the endogeneity of age specific saving rates, its multiregional structure and its open capital accounts, which allow collective regional households to hold claims on capital abroad. The demographic behaviour allows regional average saving rates to respond to changes in age distributions. As a young population ages, the proportion of its population in the saving age groups rises and so therefore does its average saving rate.

In older populations, further aging raises the proportion of non-working aged, and so its average saving rate tends to fall. The Chinese 60+ age group is unusual, however, in that it has had low labour force participation but high state-financed retirement incomes. The pensions, combined with low consumption expenditures due to extended family sharing, lead to high initial retiree saving rates. The result is flat age-specific saving behaviour and hence not much decline in China's average saving rate as its projected population ages. In the analysis that follows, however, we impose exogenous shocks to China's saving behaviour that are in the range suggested by Wei and Zhang (2009).
4. The demographic significance of China's gender imbalances
There have been a number of valuable, though purely demographic, analyses of China's gender imbalances, including those by Li and Jiang (2005) and Zeng (2007) cited above. In this section we cover some of the same ground but with two differences. First we are more pessimistic than the official view of China's fertility and its future population growth, assuming that its total fertility rate will decline to 1.2 by 2030. We choose this as a baseline fertility projection because we are now convinced by the analysis of Zhao (2011) and Zhao and Chen (2011) that even the United Nation's (2010) medium fertility variant for China is too high.[24]

Second, the model's disaggregation of the overall population between households dependent on skilled (professional) and unskilled (production) occupations enables us to move beyond the standard measure of the share of unmatched males as the difference between the male and female populations, expressed as a proportion of the male population. In particular, we calculate four alternative shares: 1) the share of unmatched boys 0-14, which is a signal to parents that there will be competition for partners for their sons, 2) the share of unmatched low-skill males of reproductive age, if marriages are restricted to partnerships between people of the same socioeconomic status (i.e., no hypergamy), 3) the share of unmatched low-skill males if women from low-skill families choose to marry up (i.e., hypergamy), ensuring that there are no unmatched skilled men, and 4) the share of unmatched low-skill males if sufficient numbers of low-skill women choose to be second partners of high-skill men so as to allow these men to have 1.5 partners on average. While the fourth share offers a socially uncomfortable prospect, there is ample anecdotal evidence for women from low-income households preferring second partnerships with rich men over exclusive marriages to poor men. The number is clearly larger than unity, though our choice of 1.5 is arbitrary and illustrative.
Alternative SRB Scenarios
Recent studies suggest that China's SRB has already begun to decline in some provinces, while the rate of increase has slowed in others (das Gupta et al. 2009). That the growth of the SRB is slowing is also supported by population census and 1% population sample survey data (Figure 2). We therefore choose a baseline scenario that has the SRB converging upon a level not far above that already reached, as shown in Figure 3. Our comparatively pessimistic baseline path for Chinese fertility, combined with the SRB path shown in Figure 3, yields the paths for population components shown in Figure 4. Note that the total population peaks in the current decade and then declines, as do both the total male and female populations. The skilled population rises continuously, while the unskilled population begins declining sooner and falls more sharply than the total population. Under this scenario then, the effects of population slow down and decline are already in train.[25]

Scenario 2 has policy actions (regarding fertility and gender discrimination in particular), combined with endogenous preference changes, bringing about a return of the SRB to 106 by 2030, also shown in Figure 3. We also consider two counterfactual scenarios. In Scenario 3, the SRB remains constant at 106 throughout the period to indicate how different China's demography and economy might have looked had the gender problem not arisen. Scenario 4 makes this same assumption for the SRB, but in addition assumes an average fertility rate for China that is higher than in the baseline. The purpose of this scenario is to explore the additional effect of using some relaxation of fertility restrictions as part of a policy arsenal to reduce the SRB. It is unclear how much China's fertility restrictions actually constrain birth choices so we make the arbitrary choice to allow a return to the United Nations' medium fertility variant in this fourth scenario, which sees an average fertility rate of 1.8 in 2030 (up from our baseline level of 1.2).

The key demographic outcomes for 2030 based on these four scenarios are summarised in Table 1. The baseline results reveal the extent of China's gender problem implied by a "no policy change" stance: 27.7 million (or 11.6%) of males between the ages of 15 and 39 would be unmatched, or 'excess', by 2030. This percentage is very similar to the 11% estimate of Zeng (2007), even though his estimate is based on the 20-49 age group. In the worst-case (and least palatable) scenario in which skilled men take 1.5 women, there would be 47.8 million unmatched unskilled males, indicating that the social stability and crime-related problems described by Hudson and den Boer (2004, 2008) and Edlund et al. (2010) could be very substantial indeed.

The large proportion of low-skilled Chinese men of reproductive age that is projected to be unmatched is placed in an East Asian context in Figure 6. This figure shows our baseline projection of the number of such unmatched Chinese men, which grows to between near 30 and near 50 million by 2030, and compares it with the total number of women of reproductive age from low-skill households in East and Southeast Asia, including the Koreas, Indochina and Southeast Asia but excluding Japan. This comparison motivates the scale of the mismatch problem. By 2030 there will be less than 100 million women to make potential matches with the 30-50 million low-skill Chinese men, but these women are in no sense in surplus. They are all fully matched in their own regions, if not in short supply themselves, and they would have no incentive to relinquish marriage in their own countries for marriage to low-skill Chinese men. The clear conclusion is that, while trafficking of Asian women into China is likely to occur at the margin, female immigration cannot address the scale of the mismatch.

Considering the long lead times required for demographic changes to affect overall populations, it is not surprising that the demographic outcomes of Scenario 2, being identical in all other respects, are similar to those in the baseline. However, there is a considerable reduction in the gender imbalance by 2030, at least for children, with the sex ratio of 0-14 year olds reaching 111.5 compared with a baseline of 120.1, implying 10.3% of excess males in this age group, compared with 16.7% in the baseline.

Since the SRB is lower in the two counterfactual simulations than the actual data for the base year show, base year age-specific sex ratios are well above balance, and indeed above the assumed SRB of 106. Consequently, in these simulations there are initial declines through time in age-specific sex ratios as the effect of the lower SRB flows through the age groups. It is clear from Table 1 that the number of unmatched low-skill males by 2030 is significantly lower in this counterfactual. The number of such unmatched males remains high, however, if skilled males take 1.5 women, since this creates unmatched low-skill males even if the SRB were always balanced. In the higher-fertility variant, births are boosted additionally (if only slightly) by the increased number of women to bear children. The result is higher population and labour force growth. As we will see from the analysis in the next section, this is a key source of economic impact.
5. The economic implications of China's gender imbalances
Overall, the economic effects of the lower SRB trend reflected in Scenario 2 compared with the baseline are very small since a decline in the SRB alone supplies very little change in the levels and skill shares of the labour force by 2030. However, as discussed in Section 2, gender imbalances impact on saving rates and on productivity as it is affected by the disaffection of low-skill males and related crime. We incorporate these impacts in the simulations that follow.
Simulation 1: A declining sex ratio with saving effects
Our first application is to the Du and Wei (2010) hypothesis that China's household saving rate has risen at least partially because of competition amongst families of unmatched males. Since this competition is likely to take place between families of male children, we show the baseline shares of unmatched males aged 0-14 in comparison with the recent paths of household and corporate saving as shares of GDP in Figure 6. From these results it is clear, first, that the saving shares of GDP and the unmatched shares of male children have similar upward trends, offering some tentative support for the Du and Wei hypothesis. Second, the levels of the unmatched shares are high; suggesting that, in 2010, between a sixth and a fifth of low-skill male children can expect to remain unmatched. By 2030, these shares will have risen to between a fifth and a quarter, amounting to between 19 and 27 million boys.[26]

The empirical work by Wei and Zhang (2010) suggests that changes in the sex ratio explain 30-60 per cent of the change in the household saving rate. From Figure 6, household saving as a share of GDP rose by nine percentage points between 1997 and 2010. A liberal interpretation of the Wei-Zhang results would suggest that 45 per cent of this, or four percentage points, was due to the changing sex ratio. Coincidentally, our simulated unmatched share of boys (0-14) also rose by four percentage points in this period. This does not suggest a unit-elasticity for all China's saving, however, since household saving is only 60 per cent of the total. With this adjustment we deduce an elasticity of 0.6, indicating that a one percentage point rise in the unmatched share of 0-14 males yields a 0.6 per cent rise in the share of GDP committed to saving.[27]

We use this information in Simulation 1, which is based on the decline in China's SRB from 120 to 106, as shown in Figure 3 for Scenario 2. As shown in Section 3, this lower SRB causes the unmatched share of boys to fall and we now assume that this induces a decline in saving. The decline in savings manifests itself in two ways. In the short run, reduced savings cause a rise in consumption expenditure on home goods (which are assumed to be more inelastic than foreign goods). Other things equal, this tends to boost GDP in the short run. However, in the medium to long run, reduced savings lead to reductions in home investment and foreign assets from which income accrues later, both of which reduce GDP.

Since the shocks to saving are proportional to the difference between the two SRB scenarios in Figure 3, they occur gradually, allowing the long-run investment effect to dominate from the outset. Yet these net effects are small, as indicated in Figure 7. The changes in real investment, real GDP and real per capita income are shown to amount to no more than a percentage point by 2030. At the same time, the rate of change by 2030 is very considerable, suggesting that the saving effect could become much more important in the years beyond 2030. This raises the unfortunate possibility that rectifying China's gender problem could actually have negative economic impacts in the future.

Following Du and Wei (2012), it is also possible to see from this simulation the effects of these shocks on China's real exchange rate. The net effect is small, however. Reduced saving tends to appreciate the real exchange rate, as Du and Wei indicate, but with a magnitude of only half a per cent by 2030.
Simulation 2: A declining SRB with saving and crime-related productivity effects
Characterising the implications of disaffected low-skill men for aggregate economic performance is heroic at best given the non-complementary nature of social research on this issue for China to date. We embark on this with the objective of illustrating the potential scale of impacts rather than to offer a definitive forecast. Our reasoning is conservative throughout and it runs as follows.

As described in Section 2, Edlund et al. (2007, 2010) use Chinese statistics to draw a clear link between the sex ratio and crime. They control for other causes and deduce that one per cent rise in the sex ratio is sufficient to cause property and violent crime to increase by three per cent. The next link in the argument is an estimate of the scale of the productivity effects of crime in China, but this is unavailable to our knowledge. Instead, we note from studies of the economic implications of crime in the US that its cost has been measured at around five per cent of GDP (Harwood et al. 2009). We then speculate that violent and property crime in China could impact its economy in approximately the same proportion. This yields a link between the sex ratio and the productivity impact of associated crime.

Combining the Edlund et al. relationship with a GDP shortfall by five per cent due to property and violent crime, it follows that a fall in the sex ratio by one percentage point would increase real GDP by 0.03*0.05=0.0015=0.15 per cent. This implies that a fall in the sex ratio by 10 percentage points would increase real GDP by only 1.5 per cent. However, crime is primarily an urban phenomenon that impairs the services sector more than others. Combine this with the fact that the first urban destination of most low-skill men is the construction sector, in which the majority of investment expenditure occurs, and the effects of crime are leveraged noticeably. Through these admittedly speculative steps we apply the following sequence: a rise of one per cent in the sex ratio of 15-39 year olds yields a three per cent rise in the crime burden. Since the services sector supplies roughly half of GDP in China, if crime reduces GDP by five per cent, but its effects are concentrated in services, it must reduce services GDP by roughly 10 per cent, and so the effect of crime originating with unmatched males deducts three per cent from about a tenth of services GDP. Thus an increase of one per cent in the sex ratio of 15-39 year olds thereby reduces total factor productivity in both services and capital goods production by 0.3 per cent.[28]

While we have leveraged what little supporting information is available we believe the resulting elasticity of -0.3 to be conservative, considering the first argument of Rodrik (1998), that "social conflict" is typically responsible for the much larger growth collapses observed in the more poorly performing developing countries, and second, the observations of Easterly (2001) on the causes of growth stagnation at middle income. The widening of China's income distribution is just one factor that makes more fragile the political threads that hold its growth performance together (Tyers 2012), to which 30-50 million disaffected males of reproductive age would add.

In our second simulation, we assume the same decline in China's SRB to 106 by 2030. At the same time, this decline is linked to consumption behaviour so as to reduce the average saving rate as described previously. Now we add the links between the sex ratio of the 15-39 age group and total factor productivity in the services and capital goods sector. These have the effect of boosting productivity as the sex ratio declines toward balance. The results are illustrated in Figure 8.

The story here is that the crime-related productivity shocks are shown to outweigh the slowing effects of lower saving and so they lead to stronger growth in the latter stages as the sex ratio of 15-35 year olds falls. Investment is affected most because low-skill men work in the construction industry, the largest single component of the capital goods sector. GDP and real wages rise by less than investment because the crime shocks are restricted to the services and the capital goods industries and so productivity in agriculture and manufacturing is unchanged. Real per capita income rises least because it depends not only on home output (real GDP) but, increasingly in the later stages, also on income from assets abroad, which are considerable but made smaller by the lower saving rate in this simulation.

Finally, the effects on the real exchange rate are here mixed. The saving and crime shocks are partially offsetting. Reduced saving tends to appreciate the real exchange rate, as Du and Wei indicate, but improved services productivity from reduced crime affecting the largely non-traded sectors tends to depreciate it. The trajectory is flatter than in Figure 8 and it turns negative near the end as the productivity effects outweigh the saving effects. Overall, the effects on China's simulated economic performance across more than two decades are still smaller than a single year's growth.
Simulations 3 and 4: Low-SRB Counterfactuals
Here we construct two counterfactual simulations based on Scenarios 3 and 4, both with a constant Chinese SRB at 106, the first with baseline fertility and the second with higher fertility, as described in Section 4. The lower SRB is assumed to reduce savings and crime, and therefore to increase productivity in same manner as Simulations 1 and 2. The cumulative per cent departures from our baseline simulation are as indicated in Figures 9 and 10 respectively.

Here again, a struggle is evident between the counterfactual's lower saving and its higher productivity. The higher productivity wins in terms of investment and real GDP, which is larger in 2030 by a twentieth. But the reduced saving retards the growth of real per capita income, the net effects on which are negligible. When we introduce higher fertility in the second counterfactual simulation the differences are due to the resulting higher population and labour force indicated in Table 1. From Figure 10 we see the expected (Solow-Swan) combination of reduced real wages and real per capita income higher real GDP. The increased workers and the reduced crime cause additional real GDP growth, sufficient to raise its level by one-tenth in 2030. The increased population, however, weighs on wages and real per capita income, resulting in comparatively small real wage increases and a net decline in real per capita income.

Reduced saving enters this mix by tending to reduce the growth in investment, mostly in the middle of the period, but this is more than offset by crime-related productivity improvements in the capital goods and services sectors, so investment growth is enhanced on net. The path of additional investment tends to tail off at the end because the convergence of the sex ratio on 106 in both the counterfactual and he baseline sees growth in the productivity shocks die away at the end. As this happens, additional accumulated capital lowers home capital returns and hence tends to attract less investment. Since services are skill intensive compared with the other industries, stronger services growth in the counterfactual simulation raises the relative demand for skilled workers, which is why the gains in real skilled wages exceed those in real unskilled wages.
6. Conclusions
One of the constraints to continued rapid Chinese GDP growth is the slowdown and eventual contraction of labour force, which has been accelerated by China's one-child policy. A complicating associated factor arises due to the Chinese traditional preference for at least one son, which, via selective abortion, has caused a rise in the SRB. This has reduced the share of women of reproductive age and so further slowed population and labour force growth. While slower population growth in itself has impacts positively on per capita income growth, gender imbalances have other widely noted undesirable consequences, including excessive saving as families with boys compete to match their sons with scarce girls, trafficking in women and rising disaffection and crime amongst the low-skill male population.

Results from our dynamic modelling suggest that, depending on the tendency for low-skill women to "marry up" and to choose second partnership with wealthy men over marriage to poor ones, by 2030 the number of low-skill men of reproductive age that is unmatched will be between 27 and 50 million, and still growing. Though this is sure to result in rising trafficking of women from other East Asian countries, the number is simply too large for female immigration to allow a return to balance.

Even if policy changes can succeed in reducing the SRB to normal levels, we expect that the purely demographic implications would be small, at least by 2030. The decline in saving by families observing improved marriage prospects for their boys would slow investment and income growth, but there would be fewer disaffected men of reproductive age and so less crime. In our preliminary quantification of these effects, the reduced crime offers more growth benefits than are lost due to the reduced saving, although given some of the heroic assumptions made to reach this point, we concede that the opposite outcome could occur: rectifying China's gender problem could actually have negative economic impacts in the future.

This does not amount to conceding that China's gender problem should not be rectified, however. The pursuit policy reforms to achieve gender balance is further supported in that, as other political tensions rise through time, it is possible that the high SRB and the large number of unmatched and disaffected low-skill males could constitute the marginal pathology that tips China into Rodrik's political malaise and significantly slower per capita growth. Yet such policies will not come without cost. If a further relaxation of the "one child" policy is needed to help restore gender balance, for example, more rapid population growth will slow the growth of real per capita incomes and hence the growth in the welfare of individual Chinese.
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Figure 1: Long-term trends in China's Sex Ratio at Birth
Source: United Nations (2010)
Figure 2: Recent trends in China's Sex Ratio at Birth
Source: Li (2007), based on China population censuses in 1982,1990 and 2000 and 1% population sample surveys in 1987,1995 and 2005.
Figure 3: Exogenous Projection of China's Sex Ratio at Birth
Source: Population census data (Li 2007) and exogenous projections described in the text
Figure 4: Chinese Population Structure and its Change Through Time
Source: Baseline simulation of the model described in the text.
Figure 5: Unmatched Chinese Males 15-39 in East and SE Asian Contexta
(Millions)

a This compares the number of unmatched mainland Chinese production worker males with the number of women in the same age group that are in production worker families in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Indochina and other Southeast Asia.

Source: Baseline (Chinese SRB and fertility) simulation of the model described in the text.
Figure 6: Chinese Saving and Unmatched 0-14 Male Shares, %
Source: Saving rates are derived from official macroeconomic statistics, including "flow of funds" data. The unmatched male shares are from a retrospective simulation under baseline assumptions about the SRB and fertility, as described in the text.
Figure 7: Effects of Reducing the SRB - Saving and Labour Structure Changes Onlya
a These are cumulative % deviations from the baseline simulation with high SRB.

Source: Simulations of the model described in the text.
Figure 8: Effects of Reducing the SRB, including Saving, Labour Structure and Crime-Related Productivity Changesa
a These are cumulative % deviations from the baseline simulation.

Source: Simulations of the model described in the text.

Figure 9: Departures from the Baseline of a Counterfactual with Constant SRB=106 and Associated Differences in Saving, Labour Structure and Crime-Related Productivitya

a These are cumulative % deviations from the baseline simulation.

Source: Simulations of the model described in the text.

Figure 10: Departures from the Baseline of a Counterfactual with Constant SRB=106, Higher Fertility and Associated Differences in Saving, Labour Structure and Crime-Related Productivitya

a These are cumulative % deviations from the baseline simulation. These results parallel those in Figure 10, except that they also include higher fertility, with the TFR remaining at 1.8 through 2030. The differences between the two figures are therefore due only to this fertility change.

Source: Simulations of the model described in the text.
Table 1: Demographic Outcomes of China's gender imbalances
(Levels for 2030)

Note: Scenario 2 is lower SRB, Scenario 3 is counterfactual SRB of 106 with baseline fertility, Scenario 4 is counterfactual SRB of 106 with higher fertility.
Source: Simulations of the model discussed in the text.
Funding for the research described in this paper is from Australian Research Council Discovery Grant No. DP0557885 and it also draws on the resources of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University.

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China's Gender Imbalance and its Economic Performance

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Jane GOLLEY Centre for China in the World Australian National University Rod TYERS Business School University of Western Australia, and Research School of Economics Australian National University August 2012 Key words: China, growth, demography, sex ratio, imbalance JEL codes: D58, J11, J13, J16, J21 Abstract Chinese GDP growth faces rising challenges that include the slowdown and eventual contraction of its labour force, a complication of which is its rising sex ratio at birth.

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Gender Imbalance in China | All Girls Allowed

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The most normal sex ratios are seen where the One-Child Policy is most permissive.[viii] One example can be seen in Tibet, which has the most permissive family planning in China with no birth limitation policies for Tibetans residing within the Tibet Autonomous Region, and, as of the 2005 census, was the only Chinese province which still had a normal sex ratio at birth.[ix]

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By Katie Nelson
While single Chinese women face the ill-fated label of being considered a 'leftover' once they're past 30, many bachelors of the same age are seen as prime candidates for marriage-as long as they can afford it.
As we've discussed in the past, there is an established and massive pressure for a Chinese woman to be married by a certain age. Some single Chinese women were under such pressure over the holidays that they resorted to renting boyfriends to bring home to their families for Spring Festival.
But for all of the 5.82 million single women aged 29-39 in China, there are 12 million unmarried men of the same age, according to the most recent census. So why do men often escape the brunt of the blame?
According to a recent Shanghai Daily report, as long as these men have a good job and enough dough, they're "golden bachelors".
"I'm not left over. Yes, I'm desperate for a happy marriage and kids of my own, and I've got great pressure from parents, but I won't rush into marriage until I find the right one I truly love and respect," Alex Zhu, a 29 year old resident of Minhang District, said. "In addition, I really enjoy my single life now."
Zhu would like to get married before he turns 30. "But if I can't, I will never lower my standards for a happy married life."
Not everyone seeking a spouse is in such a cushioned position.
"Are you aware of how much it costs to date a girl? I mean a serious date that might lead to a marriage?" says Chen Weibing, 28, an office worker earning 7,000 yuan a month. "It's hard for me to save money for the future," Chen told the Daily. "But the tricky part is that no girl will marry me if I don't pay for dates and gifts, but if I keep paying out like this, I won't have money to marry."
It's a convoluted situation for men and women alike, but it seems that economics will continue to play a huge role in the marriage market.
As the New York Times reports:

A generation ago, China was one of the world's most equal nations, in both gender and wealth. Most people were poor, and tight controls over housing, employment, travel and family life simplified the search for a suitable match - what the Chinese call mendang hudui, meaning roughly 'family doors of equal size.'
China's transition to a market economy has swept away many restrictions in people's lives. But of all the new freedoms the Chinese enjoy today - making money, owning a house, choosing a career - there is one that has become an unexpected burden: seeking a spouse.

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'Leftover' men of China: You're okay (as long as you're rich)

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While single Chinese women face the ill-fated label of being considered a 'leftover' once they're past 30, many bachelors of the same age are seen as prime candidates for marriage...

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Chinese social credit system has become a hot topic - especially in foreign media. But what's true and what's not? How is the issue discussed on Chinese social media? What's on Weibo explores some recent developments in the emerging field of social credit in China.

"Big brother is watching," some English-language media write, others compare it to 'Black Mirror,' while some call it righout "creepy"; China's emerging social credit system is an issue that many foreign journalists and China watchers are currently concerned with - sometimes even alleging that the Chinese social credit system is "as bizarre as it sounds."

On Chinese media and social media platforms, there seem to be very different attitudes on social credit in China. Apart from official stances that say it promotes a "harmonious society," netizens also seem to focus much more on the perks than the alleged dangers of social credit records.

Jeremy Daum at China Law Translate published an insightful article ( must-read!) in late 2017 in which he made the point that foreign media are grossly conflating Sesame Credit (aka Zhima Credit) and Social Credit, and in doing so, are misrepresenting what is happening in China regarding these systems. So what actually is fact and what is fiction when it comes to the social credit in China?

Sesame Credit versus Social Credit

There is so much Chinese terminology relating to social credit in China that it is perhaps not that surprising that the lines have become blurred between the actual Social Credit system and a number of private programs.*

In a recent article titled " China's Social Credit System Is Not What You Think It Is" (in Dutch), ChinaTalk author Ed Sander (@ edsander) sets out existing misconceptions about China's credit systems.

The most important existing misconception is that it is often suggested that there is just one 'social credit system' in China. In reality, there are two separate systems that operate independently; the commercial credit systems (such as the Sesame Credit by Alibaba) and the Social Credit system by the Chinese government, which it has promised to roll out nationally by 2020.

The system that has arguably been most discussed in foreign media is Sesame Credit ( Zhīma xìnyòng 芝麻信用), implemented by Alibaba's Ant Financial. Sesame Credit already had 520 million users as of 2017.

As Jeremy Daum points out, Sesame Credit is one of the business trials that has been granted permission by the People's Bank of China to experiment with individual credit reporting. NB: The central bank has its own Credit Reference Centre since 2006, which is tasked with operating a national commercial and consumer credit reporting system to enable financial institutions to assess borrowers' creditworthiness.

Sesame Credit was launched in 2015. Because it is part of the Alibaba family, Sesame Credit has an enormous amount of data at its disposal, from e-commerce sites to finance products (Taobao, Tianmao, Alipay, etc), through which it compiles users' own scores, going from 350-950, for those who have opted into the program. The scores are based on a number of things, including people's payment history, their contacts and network, and online behavior.

It is not mandatory for users to opt into Sesame Credit. Some have compared the system to a loyalty program, although it is a bit more than that. Since 2015, for example, Sesame Credit also cooperates with the popular online dating service company Baihe.com (百合网), so that people can link their dating profile to their credit score.

One of the reasons why foreign media have written so much about Sesame Credit as an 'Orwellian system' is that it incorporates a publicly available 'blacklist' into its scoring process. The 'blacklist' is a Chinese courts' list with the names of people that have an effective court justice against them.

Inclusion on this list can make users' existing Sesame Credit drop dramatically, which would make people miss out on all perks of having a high Sesame Sore, e.g. no deposits in renting cars, bicycles, or booking hotels ( Xinhua 2017).

Some media* have conflated this with the overall negative side effects of being on list of court debtors; it is not Sesame Credit, but the Social Credit schemes that can punish citizens by revoking certain government benefits and putting them on heightened scrutiny until they repay their debts ( Daum 2017b).

Besides Sesame Credit, there are also other corporations rolling out credit scores. One of them is Tencent Credit (腾讯信用), which was also established in 2015 and had a trial running in January of 2018.

China's Social Credit system is currently not a national one - it is outlined to be implemented nationwide by 2020 - but it is being experimented with in various regions and cities across China.

Daum (2017) describes it as a 'policy' or 'ideology of data use' rather than a 'system', and explains it as "the Chinese Party-State's shorthand for a broad range of efforts to improve market security and public safety by increasing integrity and mutual trust in society."

Chinese social management expert Samantha Hoffman says the system is just "adding technology and adding a formality to the way the Party already operates," which reiterates a stance by scholar Rogier Creemers, who claims that the system itself is not 'new' and can be compared to decade-old ways in which the government is keeping a tab on its citizens ( Creemers et al 2016).

The Social Credit 'system' essentially will be focused on accumulating and integrating information, and will create measures that encourage 'trustworthy behavior' and punishes those who are not 'trustworthy' (Daum 2017). It is unlikely that the collected personal data will be reflected in one single score, as has been suggested by various media.

Earlier this year, the PRC's National Development & Reform Commission and People's Bank of China released a list of the 12 top cities implementing Social Credit experiments this year, namely: Hangzhou, Nanjing, Xiamen, Chengdu, Suzhou, Suqian, Huizhou, Wenzhou, Weihai, Yiwu, and Rongcheng.

Rongcheng, a county-level city in Shandong province, has been at the center of a recent Foreign Policy article by Mistreanu (2018), which describes how many Rongcheng citizens have already embraced the Social Credit pilot, and seem happy with how it improves the community.

The Rongcheng Credit system is one of both rewards and punishments, as also described of other bigger local systems by Daum (2017b). Online defamation or abuse of family members will negatively affect one's societal credit, whereas taking care of one's parents or positively influencing one's neighborhood will lead to better rankings. In Rongcheng, top rankers are praised by being displayed on a board near the village center (Mistreanu 2018).

Sesame & Sharing

China's social credit system and Sesame Credit are a hot topic on social media networks such as Twitter or Facebook, where they are often discussed in negative ways. On Sina Weibo, one of China's biggest social media platforms, however, both topics are discussed very differently. Sesame Credit is mostly linked to fun extras and the Chinese sharing economy.

At time of writing, Sesame Credit has 240.000 fans on its official Weibo account (@ 芝麻信用), where they promote the most recent benefits to users with higher credit scores, such as the possibility to get Hello Bicycle (哈罗单车) rental bikes without deposits.

Some netizens discuss the recent cooperation between Ford and Alibaba, in which people with a Sesame Credit Score over 700 points can test drive the new Ford Explorer for three days for free.

Apart from Hello Bike or Ford, there is a myriad of other brands that seem happy to participate in the Sesame Credit system and the idea of Shared Economy.

Mobrella, an operator of umbrella sharing services for urban consumers, allows Sesame Credit users with a score over 600 to use their umbrellas without paying deposits. Anbai (按呗), a company focused on shared massage chairs, also lets 600+ scorers use their relaxation chairs for free.

"Thumbs up for sharing [economy]!", some netizens comment.

The benefits of a higher Sesame Credit score go beyond brand services. In places such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, or Wenzhou, for example, people with a credit score of respectively 600 and 500 can go to the local library and borrow books for free without paying any deposit. Some places offer public self-service booths where people can borrow their books without having to go to the library.

At the Zhejiang University Hospital, patients with a Sesame Credit score over 650 can enjoy privileges such as seeing a doctor first and worry about payment later, or free use of available wheelchairs. In Shenzhou and other cities, people with a 650+ score can rent cars without paying deposits.

There are countless examples of how a higher credit score is making life easier and more convenient for people in dozens of cities across China, which is why a score of approximately 650 is something people strive for. "I overheard some people on the subway today discussing how they could raise their Sesame Credit score to rank over 640," one Weibo user says: "I'd never even checked my score, but somehow it currently is as high as 810!"

Karma & Credit Scores

Different from Sesame Credit, the national and/or local social credit system is not discussed much on Chinese social media. When it is discussed, there seems to be more focus on the punitive side of the system than on the rewards.

In early May, for example, a young man from Shanxi was the first local person to be put on the so-called "lose trust blacklist" (失信黑名单), and was banned from traveling by train for 180 days as part of the Social Credit implementation, after jumping over the ticket barriers at Yangling Station. Many commenters supported the ban, saying: "This kind of people with no regard for the rules should be banned from traveling indefinitely."

Another example is that Guangdong authorities, on May 22, announced the implementation of a special blacklist for people violating the rules of the bike-sharing industry. Those vandalizing a bike, for instance, could be banned from using any bike-sharing service and their social credit will be negatively affected. A top commenter wrote: "Excellent, absolutely excellent - I hope this will be implemented all across the country."

A recent experiment by Shenzhen police, in which facial recognition technologies were used to catch jaywalkers, also attracted the attention on social media. State newspapers reported that these kinds of traffic violations will also influence people's personal credit in the future.

Although many people see the social credit systems working as a sort of 'law of karma', not all netizens agree. One person responding to the jaywalkers' case says: "When it comes to traffic violations - we have relevant laws for those. Making them affect one's personal credit seems to be over the top."

Credit Cities

What is noteworthy about the nascent Social Credit systems on Weibo is that many local governments have already set up their own Social Credit Implementation accounts - some have even already been registered in 2014.

Zhuhai (Guangdong) has its own "Social Credit System & Market Control System" Weibo account (@ 珠海市两建办); there's an account by Wenzhou (Guangdong) (@ 温州-谢枫); Suzhou (Jiangsu) (@ 苏州工业园区信用平台); Suqian (Jiangsu) (@ 诚信宿迁); Wuhu (Anhui) (@ 信用芜湖), and others.

Although these accounts are not yet popular, without many fans or discussions, their online presence does signal that Weibo might have hundreds of similar accounts in the future when the Social Credit system is implemented nationwide, with cities informing citizens of new measures and/or guideline relating to the credit system through social media.

With Hangzhou currently being the top city when it comes to building the social credit system, along with the city closely working together with Sesame Credit, it has now even been labeled "Credit City" (信用之城) by Chinese media.

Rather than framed as "creepy" or "bizarre" by foreign media, it is words such as "safety", "harmony", and "convenience" that are mostly used by Chinese media to describe these avant-garde cities, where "trust" and "credit" are seemingly becoming a crucial asset for citizens who care about 'karma' and 'personal perks.'

"I support it," one Weibo commenter writes: "I hope it will have a positive influence on society."

* Some Terminology:
'Social credit system': 社会信用体系
'Sesame Credit': 芝麻信用
'Credit scores': 信用评分
'Personal credit systems': 个人征信系统
'Credit information services': 征信服务
'People's personal credit structure': 民间个人征信机构

* Some media such as The Independent in: "China wants to give all of its citizens a score - and their rating could affect every area of their lives."

References ( others linked directly within text)

Creemers, Rogier. 2018. "China's Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control."May 9. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3175792.

Creemers, Rogier; Peter Marris; Samantha Hoffman; Pamela Kyle Crossley. 2016. "What Could China's 'Social Credit System' Mean for its Citizens?" Foreign Policy, Aug 15
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/15/what-could-chinas-social-credit-system-mean-for-its-citizens/ [26.5.18].

Daum, Jeremy. 2017. "China through a glass, darkly." China Law Translate, Dec 24 https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/seeing-chinese-social-credit-through-a-glass-darkly/?lang=en [24.5.18].

Daum, Jeremy. 2017b. "Giving Credit 2: Carrots and Sticks." China Law Translate, Dec 15 https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/giving-credit-2-carrots-and-sticks/?lang=en [27.5.18].

Mistreanu, Simina. 2018. "Life Inside China's Social Credit Laboratory." Foreign Policy, April 3 http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social-credit-laboratory/ [26.5.18].

NDRC. 2018. "首批社会信用体系建设示范城市名单公布." http://www.ndrc.gov.cn/, Jan 9 http://www.ndrc.gov.cn/xwzx/xwfb/201801/t20180109_873409.html [26.5.18].

Sander, Ed. 2018. "China's Sociaal Kredietsysteem is niet wat je denkt." ChinaTalk, May 5 http://www.chinatalk.nl/chinas-sociaal-kredietsysteem-is-niet-wat-je-denkt/ [26.5.18].

Sohu. 2017. "芝麻信用分600以上可以免押金借书了." Sohu, Sept 13 http://www.sohu.com/a/191704017_402387 [27.5.18].

Xinhua. 2017. "Chinese courts use technology to tighten noose on debt defaulters." China Daily, Oct 4 http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-10/04/content_32830450.htm [26.5.18].

Xinhua. 2018. "深圳交警"刷脸"治交通违章 处罚或将挂钩个人信用." Xinhua News, May 8 http://www.xinhuanet.com/local/2017-04/24/c_1120864742.htm [26.5.18].

Xiao, Eva. 2018. "Tencent's new credit system to use payments, social data." Tech in Asia, Jan 31 https://www.techinasia.com/tencent-credit-launch [26.5.18].

Zhang Yuzhe, Peng Qinqin and Dong Tongjian. 2017. "China Gives Little Credit to Companies Handpicked to Develop Credit-Reporting Sector." Caixin Global, May 14 https://www.caixinglobal.com/2017-05-15/101089851.html [26.5.18].
Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us.
©2018 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission - you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com .

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Not 'Leftover Women' but 'Leftover Men' Are China's Real Problem

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Chinese social credit system has become a hot topic - especially in foreign media. But what's true and what's not? How is the issue discussed on Chinese social media? What's on Weibo explores some recent developments in the emerging field of social credit in China.

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JIUQUAN, China (Reuters) - China could be considering relaxing its harsh one-child policy because of women like Hu Yanqin, who lives in a village at the edge of the Gobi desert.

When Hu married a construction worker seven years ago, she knew she was going to have only one child, although the area where she lives, the Jiuquan region in northwestern Gansu province, is one of the rare places in China where those living in rural areas have been free to have two children since 1985.

"Those people with two children are those who are better off," said Hu, 32, dropping her six-year-old son off at kindergarten. "The majority of people in my village only have one child."

Advocates of reforming China's one-child policy use Hu and millions like her as evidence that relaxing the law will not lead to a surge of births in the world's most populous nation.

Jiuquan has a birth rate of 8 to 9 per 1,000 people, lower than the national average of about 12 births per 1,000 people.

The policy, implemented since 1980 alongside reforms that have led to rapid economic expansion, is increasingly being seen as an impediment to growth and the harbinger of social problems.

The country's labor force, at about 930 million, will start declining in 2025 at a rate of about 10 million a year, projections show. Meanwhile, China's elderly population will hit 360 million by 2030, from about 200 million in 2013.

"If this goes on, there will be no taxpayers, no workers and no caregivers for the elderly," said Gu Baochang, a demography professor at Renmin University.

China's top statistician, Ma Jiantang, said last Friday that the country should look into "an appropriate and scientific family planning policy" after data showed that the country's working-age population, aged 15 to 59, fell for the first time.

Economists say the policy is also responsible for China's high savings rate. A single child often must take care of two - and four in the case of married couples - retired parents, increasing the likelihood that working adults will save money for their old age rather than spend.

That has delayed the "rebalancing" of Beijing's economy toward more consumption, a step economists believe China needs to take to keep its growth going.

Expectations that Beijing will ease the restrictions, by gradually allowing couples to have two children, have been building since outgoing President Hu Jintao conspicuously dropped the phrase "maintain a low birth rate" in a work report to a Communist Party congress in November.

It was the first time in a decade that a major speech by a top leader had omitted such a reference and could signal that the new government led by Xi Jinping is leaning toward reform.

"I think that the 18th Party Congress report indicates that, and this is my personal interpretation, the one-child policy is going to be adjusted," said Ji Baocheng, a delegate to China's rubber stamp parliament who advocates change in the policy.

BRUTAL

The one-child policy covers 63 per cent of the country's population and Beijing says it has averted 400 million births since 1980.

Its enforcement can be brutal. Couples who flout family planning laws are, at minimum, fined, some lose their jobs, and in some cases mothers are forced to abort their babies or be sterilized.

Last summer, a woman who was seven months pregnant was forced to have an abortion, triggering outrage on China's Internet and international condemnation.

But evidence has been mounting for years that the policy may be unnecessary to control population growth.

In 2008, Renmin University's Gu and the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy published a study on two-child policy programs in four regions, home to about 8 million people. They concluded that the high cost of having children is enough to hold down birthrates, but the freedom to have a second child results in a less skewed gender disparity.

The next year, sources told Reuters, the National Population and Family Planning Commission decided, as a first step, to expand pilot programs to relax the policy in four to five other regions.

The proposal was dropped for lack of a consensus among the leadership, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

The new leadership in Beijing, which assumes power formally in March, is likely to make another run at change, reform advocates believe.

"The adjustment of the policy is certain, it's only a question of time," said a recently retired official from the family planning commission, who maintains close ties with the agency.

BOYS AND GIRLS

A skewed gender ratio is another unwelcome effect of the one-child policy.

Like most Asian nations, China has a traditional bias for sons. Many families abort female fetuses and abandon baby girls to ensure their one child is a son, so about 118 boys are born for every 100 girls, against a global average of 103 to 107.

In Jiuquan, there are 110 boys for every 100 girls, far less skewed than the national average, because of the freedom to have two children.

Tian Xueyuan, one of the drafters of the original one-child policy, told Reuters that he had warned top officials nearly a decade ago of the flaws.

"A substantial portion of China's men will not be able to find a match ... and that will be a major factor of social instability," Tian said he told party leaders.

The usefulness of the one-child policy, he said, has run its course. "It's a special policy with a time limit, specifically, to control the births of one generation," Tian told Reuters.

Still, there are significant pockets of resistance. Last week, Wang Xia, the minister in charge of the family planning commission, said China will "unswervingly adhere" to its family planning policy.

Her remarks dismayed reformers expecting change from the new government, and ignited an outcry among Chinese Internet users.

Analysts said Wang's remarks did not necessarily reflect the thinking of the incoming government. The commission declined to comment.

In Jiuquan today, though the one-child policy is relaxed, women are still subject to strict family planning rules. They are fitted with intra-uterine devices after their first child, sterilized after their second. Anyone who defies the two-child quota pays a 30,000 yuan fine.

Few do. The women in Jiuquan complain about expensive school fees and other expenses of bringing up children.

"It's hard to raise a child," said Xing Juan, a 26-year-old with one son. "The burden is heavy."

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monetary / fiscal policy / policy makers

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In China, signs that one-child policy may be coming to an end

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China could be considering relaxing its harsh one-child policy because of women like Hu Yanqin, who lives in a village at the edge of the Gobi desert.

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China's deeply skewed sex ratio is expected to lead to a population of lifelong bachelors roughly the size of Texas by 2020. With fewer chances at parenthood under the one-child policy, the ancient preference for boys has led families to selectively abort their girls following the introduction of ultrasound technology. In China, 120 boys are born for every 100 girls. In some regions, the imbalance is as stark as 150 to 100. Some of these small rural hamlets have been nicknamed "bachelor villages" for their populations of aging single men.

With support from the Pulitzer Center, Deborah Jian Lee and Sushma Subramanian travel to China to explore the ramifications of the gender imbalance in the world's most populous country. They report on the men in poor villages who can't keep up in this competitive marriage market and whose prospects for finding a wife grow increasingly dim with each passing year. They investigate the gender imbalance's impact on women - from bachelorettes who benefit from a glut of suitors to women who are sold by their families, or trafficked from poorer regions, to marry the leftover single men.

Experts predict that China's marriage squeeze could radically alter Chinese society. Some researchers have said China's ballooning savings rate, unparalleled in the world, could be a result of families' pressure to accumulate cash to attract wives for their sons. Eventually, this trend could create a new marriage economy, encouraging lower-class parents to select for daughters to marry into wealthy families. Others forecast social unrest caused by the sexual frustration of a growing group of wifeless men. With an even starker gender imbalance looming for the next generation, the gender disparity, and its consequences, will only swell.

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China's Bachelors: When Men Outnumber Women

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China's deeply skewed sex ratio is expected to lead to a population of lifelong bachelors roughly the size of Texas by 2020. With fewer chances at parenthood under the one-child policy, the ancient preference for boys has led families to selectively abort their girls following the introduction of ultrasound technology.

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Millions of women say they have been thrown on the scrap heap

Chinese government worries that unmarried men could cause social havoc

China has upset its young female population by labelling those who fail to marry by the time they are 30 as 'left over woman'.

The Communist government ordered its feminist All-China Women's Federation to use the derogatory term in several stinging articles about the growing number of educated, professional, urban and single females aged 27-30 who have 'failed' to find a husband and are now deemed 'undesirable'.

'Pretty girls do not need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family. But girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult,' reads one article titled 'Leftover Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy'.

The derogatory name has been picked up by the state media and stuck, causing an outcry among millions of ambitious young and educated females who claim they have been thrown on the scrap heap - and who bemoan the low quality of suitors.

The conservative country is going under rapid changes with more women shunning tradition to wed and raise a family early.

But the government wants to shame them into marrying young to counter the growing and serious gender imbalance among the of 1.3 billion population.

Selective abortions because of the one-child policy means far more males are born then females - 118 boys to 100 girls.

The government is also worried hordes of unmarried men roaming the country could spark social havoc.

Leta Hong-Fincher, an American academic studying at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said: 'Since 2007, the state media has aggressively disseminated the left over term in surveys, and news reports, and columns, and cartoons and pictures, basically stigmatising educated women over the age of 27 or 30 who are still single.'

Since the one child policy was introduced in 1979, there are now about 20 million more men under 30 than women under 30.

And census figures show that around one in five women aged 25-29 is unmarried.

The proportion of unmarried males that age is over a third higher - but Chinese men tend to 'marry down' both in terms of age and educational attainment.

'LEFT OVERS': THE MALE VIEW

'There is an opinion that A-quality guys will find B-quality women, B-quality guys will find C-quality women, and C-quality men will find D-quality women,' Huang Yuanyuan, a confident and single 29-year-old who works in a Beijing radio station, told the BBC.

'The people left are A-quality women and D-quality men,' she said.

But the Chinese Bridget Joneses are fighting back, demanding the government ban the 'left over women term.

The All-China Federation of Women has recently dropped the label and now refers to 'old' unmarried women - but the left over expression remains widely used elsewhere.

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The 'leftover' women: China defines official age for females being left on the shelf as 27

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Millions of women say they have been thrown on the scrap heap Chinese government worries that unmarried men could cause social havoc China has upset its young female population by labelling those who fail to marry by the time they are 30 as 'left over woman'.

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抑制"高价"彩礼需观念转变制度保证(图)_网易新闻

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抑制"高价"彩礼需观念转变制度保证(图) 彩礼,高价,农村,

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光棍儿电影简介和剧情介绍,光棍儿影评、图片、预告片、影讯、论坛、在线购票

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“目前危机还只是初现，随着上世纪90年代以来出生的男性迈入婚龄，中国男性婚姻挤压的程度还会加重。”已研究此问题十多年的李树茁警告说：“更严重的危机还没真正到来。”

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“目前危机还只是初现，随着上世纪90年代以来出生的男性迈入婚龄，中国男性婚姻挤压的程度还会加重。”已研究此问题十多年的李树茁警告说：“更严重的危机还没真正到来。”

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新华网北京2月25日电（记者 卢俊宇）2月23日开始，《中国青年报》刊发了多路记者赴豫、冀、湘、鄂、皖、甘、桂等省区贫困农村调查采访的农村"剩男"系列报道，揭露了3000万农村"剩男"这一沉重的社会问题。话题一出，立即引发舆论极大关注。毕竟当问题个人变成基数庞大、分布普遍的社会群体时，由此引发的具有连锁效应的社会问题便无法忽略了。

目前，尤其是在广大农村地区，由于"剩男"而引发的"天价彩礼""骗婚"问题不断出现，农村剩男不仅是个体危机，甚至是一种农村危机，而且还有可能影响到城市发展。理由是，当农村剩男越来越多,，从眼前来说不仅会造成买卖婚姻、性犯罪等问题，从长远来说会导致农村与城市更加割裂，还会影响到农村对城市的滋养。

"目前危机还只是初现，随着上世纪90年代以来出生的男性迈入婚龄，中国男性婚姻挤压的程度还会加重。"已研究此问题十多年的李树茁警告说："更严重的危机还没真正到来。"

男女比例失衡是一个全社会都必须面对的问题，但对于农村剩男们，他们要面临的问题更严峻，要解决的困难更严重，而这些问题和困难可能不是他们作为个体能够解决的。

这个复杂性难题需要全社会的思考、介入、解决。从政府层面，应高度重视，防患于未然，这也正在成为一个对公共管理智慧的重大考验。

首先，解决贫困地区"剩男"的婚恋难题，应先教育引导当地群众摆脱传统思想的束缚，树立生男生女都一样的观念，不要让这一群体的数字再度攀升。

其次，要进一步加快城乡一体化进程、缩小城乡差距，从多项举措去多方面为农村男性提供婚恋机会。比如可以在打工人群云集的区域开展婚恋引导和服务，为打工人群创造更多的结识合适对象的机会；可以尝试为农村剩男提供更丰富的文化服务，帮助他们纾解情绪；可以在精准扶贫中把贫困农村剩男列为重点扶贫对象，通过教育培训等手段提高农村贫困剩男的谋生及致富能力，方便他们早日成家。近年来农村女孩纷纷外出打工，也造成农村剩男增多，如果向劳动力输入比较集中的地区定点输入农村剩男，既能增加他们的收入，也能让他们多认识女性。

另外，部分农村剩男有可能终生难娶，如何保障他们在医疗、养老、低保、救济等方面的权利，也要早做准备。

各级政府可作为的空间很大，各种社会组织也应该积极帮扶农村剩男及其家庭。

【纠错】 [责任编辑: 张立红 ]
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三个层面有效破解"农村剩男"危机-新华网

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新华网北京2月25日电（记者 卢俊宇）2月23日开始，《中国青年报》刊发了多路记者赴豫、冀、湘、鄂、皖、甘、桂等省区贫困农村调查采访的农村"剩男"系列报道，揭露了3000万农村"剩男"这一沉重的社会问题。话题一出，立即引发舆论极大关注。毕竟当问题个人变成基数庞大、分布普遍的社会群体时，由此引发的具有连锁效应的社会问题便无法忽略了。 ...

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农村剩男现象调查："被迫失婚"大龄男密集出现-中新网

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2015年10月29日，甘肃省天水市甘谷县古坡乡魏家坪村，41岁的魏祥祥正在接父亲的电话，由于至今还孑然一身，好多活儿父母都安排他去做。

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90后 代际传承 剩女 农村女性 婚姻 转房 传统伦理 适婚年龄 男女比例失调 缺陷型

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中青报：纾解90后农村剩男的被剥夺感--观点--人民网

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剩女在城里 剩男跑乡下去了？

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剩女在城里 剩男跑乡下去了？_财经_腾讯网

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剩女在城里 剩男跑乡下去了？

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It has been three months since the Vietnamese "bride" of Yuan Xinqiang, from Nanliyue Village, Handan, north China's Hebei Province, went missing, but he still waits and his parents are angry and dismayed, the Beijing News reported.

Yuan's wife, nicknamed Lanlan, reportedly vanished with more than 100 other Vietnamese "brides" together with their marriage broker, Wu Meiyu, herself Vietnamese, on November 21.

It was not until her disappearance that Yuan realized that he neither had Lanlan's photo nor legal evidence of their "marriage." He did not even know where in Vietnam she originated from. She was an absolute stranger to him.

Yuan "bought" Lanlan, who held no identification papers issued by the Chinese government but claimed to have a Vietnamese ID card, after paying 100,000 yuan (U.S. $16,139) to marriage broker Wu on August 23. The money was a staggering sum and included his family's savings, some interest-free borrowed money and a further borrowed 20,000 yuan with high interest.

Despite an ongoing investigation by local police, the 100-plus households who went through a similar experience suspected that they were caught in a marriage fraud.

Xiaowu (alias), one of the missing Vietnamese "brides", returned to her "husband's" home alone. She told China Central Television that she was invited to have dinner on November 20 but lost consciousness. When she awoke she found herself in a dark room and was told she was to "marry" another husband. She refused and returned home before calling police on November 21.

A victim, surnamed Zhu, said marriage broker Wu collected his "bride's" ID card from him days before the disappearance, on the pretense of a complete set of documents securing a legal marriage, the Beijing Times reported.

"Brides" of foreign nationalities running away is not unusual according to Chinese media. A similar case occurred on October 12, 2013, when seven Cambodian "brides" who lived in Jinyun County, east China's Zhejiang Province disappeared on the same day.

According to a regulation relating to cross-cultural marriages issued in 1994, no marriage agency is allowed to broker marriage for foreigners. Individuals are also prohibited from making a profit from foreign matchmaking or carrying out marriage fraud.
Why 'Buy' a Foreign Bride?
Despite the legal restriction, underground foreign matchmaking is rampant in China, especially in impoverished villages where there are masses of bachelors due to the high cost of marrying a native woman.

Zhu, a victim of the Handan missing "brides" incident, said that in his village of Quzhou County, if a man wants to marry a native, he has to send about 120,000 yuan gift money and a car to a woman's family, as well as prepare a fully-furnished new house, which in total costs more than 400,000 yuan, the Beijing Times reported.

Quzhou County is a poverty-stricken agricultural county, said Zhu, the number of women of marriageable age is much lower than males.

The Beijing Times, quoting Wang Zehua, a researcher at Hebei Academy of Social Sciences, said that with increased urbanization growing numbers of young rural women move to cities through marriage.

Although many rural men flock into cities for a job, the high cost of marrying a woman there outweighs the money they earn, making it difficult to build a new family. As a result, they are forced to return to their villages. Anomalies in female and male rural populations leads to a serious imbalance between the sexes, said Wang.

Despite uneven economic development between rural and urban areas, the deep-rooted Chinese concept concerning reproduction is a widely discussed cultural aspect contributing to the worsening situation.

The preference for male offspring has long dominated mainstream culture. Conservatives, especially old-fashioned clans in rural areas, regard boys as the only recognized heirs to carry on a family line.

According to figures released by China's National Bureau of Statistics in January last year, men outnumbered women by 33.8 million in a country of more than 1.3 billion population.

For every 117.6 boys born there were 100 girls (the natural rate is 103 to 106 boys to every 100 girls), a government report showed in 2013.

The huge gap between sexes forces "leftover" men, particularly financially constrained rural ones, to look across the border for an "economic" bride, although this poses potential dangers.
Threats to Illegal Mixed-Marriages
Communication and cultural barriers are obvious obstacles between couples when it comes to build a long-term stable relationship.

More than two months ago a Vietnamese woman threatened to jump from a 4-story apartment, in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, but her Chinese husband had no idea why. He admitted they seldom talked to each other in their six months of marriage because of language difficulties.

But the thorniest problem of mixed-marriages is their legitimacy. In most "missing bride" cases reported, a foreign "bride" is introduced by a broker, who collects service fees but fails to assist in managing legal immigration for the woman or marriage rites for the couple, which makes the "bride" invisible in China from a legal perspective.

"Buying a bride" may relate to human trafficking or marriage fraud, which is a violation of the law, said Chen Shiqu, director of the human trafficking task force under the Ministry of Public Security, the Beijing Times reported.

If the couple has disputes, both sides' rights lack the protection of the law, Chen said.

Life in Nanliyue village has gradually returned to normal. Yuan Xiaokang, a 20-year-old compatriot of Yuan Xinqiang and fellow abandoned "groom", is seeking a job, promising to earn the 100,000 yuan lost in his failed marriage. In big cities such as Beijing, rural men can earn 2,000 to 3,000 yuan a month, much more than what they would earn in the village.

Life in Nanliyue Village has gradually returned to normal. Yuan Xiaokang, a 20-year-old abandoned "groom", is seeking a job, promising to earn the 100,000 yuan lost money. In big cities such as Beijing, rural men can only earn 2,000 to 3,000 yuan a month.

Others followed suit, except Yuan Xinqiang. He will wait a little longer, saying: "I can't believe she would fool me".

(Source: China Daily)

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Missing Vietnamese 'Brides': A Hidden Hurt for Chinese 'Leftover' Men

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It has been three months since the Vietnamese "bride" of Yuan Xinqiang, from Nanliyue Village, Handan, north China's Hebei Province, went missing, but he still waits and his parents are angry and dismayed, the Beijing News reported. Yuan's wife, nicknamed Lanlan, reportedly vanished with more than 100 other Vietnamese "brides" together with their marriage broker, Wu Meiyu, herself Vietnamese, on November 21.

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南方周末报 南方周末网站 南方周末官方网站 南方周末电子版 论坛 社区 在线阅读 新闻线索 读者 农村 剩男 娶老婆 彩礼

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南方周末 - "剩女"不下嫁，农村剩男去哪讨老婆？

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屌丝整天在网上叫房价高，政府还可以搞廉租房、公租房与经济适用房，但政府提供不了经济适用妻，这已触及政府权力的物理边界了。

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China Outlook magazine - A monthly online magazine

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The 11 th November has become the unofficial Single's Day in China. A few days prior to the Single's Day last year 20,000 single men and women attended a mass dating on an unprecedented scale that was organised by the state-supported All-China Women's Federation (ACWF). Xinhua, the state-owned media agency, reported the event under a sensationalist headline that portrayed those attending in the hope of finding a marriage partner as 'leftover men and women'. Desperate to find a solution to the sex-ratio imbalance in China, state bodies have vigorously promoted the 'leftover' men and women discourse.

The decision by China's leaders to pressurise single men and women into finding marriage partners can be precisely dated. In January 2007 the State Council issued an edict on ' Strengthening the Population and Family Planning programme', which argued that various measures had to be adopted to deal with China's serious gender imbalance at birth. Soon after, state organisations such as the ACWF began to disseminate and promote the concept of 'leftover' men and women.

The campaign pulls no punches, aiming many of its jibes at educated men and women who have chosen careers instead of families and continuing themes that have been raised before: "Women with doctoral degrees who are not actively looking for relationships have become a problem," said Luo Biliang, a member of the Guangdong Political Consultative Conference during a panel discussion at a conference held recently.

Chen Riyuan, a professor from the South China Agricultural University and also a member of the Guangdong Political Consultative Conference, was quoted recently on the ACWF website saying he always suggests that single women who want to pursue doctoral degrees should find boyfriends first. "It is for the sake of their future life and happiness. Such outstanding women should not become leftover women who have passed the optimal age for marriage" Chen said.

In fact, the ACWF accepts the definition originated by the well-known dating website Baihe.com, which defines leftover women as single women above the age of 27. The Chinese Ministry of Education has included the term in its official lexicon since 2007. In a survey of 30,000 men, more than 90% said women should marry before 27 to avoid becoming unwanted, according to an ACWF survey.

The organization quotes Li Yinhe, a renowned sexologist saying: "Many Chinese people, especially the elderly, would consider the choice of staying single an act of being unfilial". She adds: "Those who see single life as bliss are in a small minority, and most single women are looking for an end to their single lives". She believes that leftover women will face growing intolerance in Chinese society, whilst at the same time many women will become more comfortable with being unattached.

"Pluralism is the trend of social development. I hope that there will be a day where people are allowed to live their life the way they want without others picking on them. At that time, being single will not be seen as an issue any more," said Li.

Such views are not universally accepted, particularly among young Chinese women, as is illustrated by the comments left on the ACWF website beneath the articles quoted above.

"Once choosing the road, a woman should be brave enough to go on with it, even if they are alone," says one reader. "For knowledge, personal quality, social development and future demand perspectives, education definitely adds value to women," said netizen 'Hailin2198′. "Do the best thing in the best time. Education and marriage are both important. A woman should balance between the two by herself. They should make their own choices as long as they won't feel regret in the future," said netizen 'Ponyo Ponyo on the Cliff'.

'Laozhou' said people should not make a big deal out of the matter: "Many of my colleagues are women holding doctoral degrees. They are normal people too. Their rate of marriage is no less than other groups, and some of them can be well balanced between their family and career." He added that the officials should be careful to use only official statistics before making pronouncements: "They should prove the relation between marriage and education first," he said.

Netizen 'A Er' agreed: "The women holding doctoral degrees that I know are pretty regular people. The only difference is that they have more years of education. As a highly-educated group, they are easy targets for media hype."

As China's professional classes debate the issue, what is not in doubt in the fact that the male to female sex ratio at birth has risen gradually from 108.5:100 in 1982 to 118.6:100 in 2005, and continued to fluctuate around 118 until 2010. Although the 6th National Census witnessed a slight decline in sex ratio imbalance, men still outnumbered women by 33.98m. Researchers Xu and Cui find that the two factors serve to explain the sex ratio imbalance and the missing girls: sex-selected abortion counts for 76.03% whilst the remaining 23.97% is due to the omitted reports of girls.

Households that violate the family planning laws have to pay fines and the violators may run the risk of losing jobs. Therefore, sex-selective abortion is adopted as a strategy to have a boy without being punished. Households that violate the family planning laws tend not to report the existence of the girls to government, leading to the missing numbers of girls reflected in the statistics.

Other figures from ACWF suggest that there are as many as 5.82m leftover women ( sheng nu) in China and that those with high educational qualifications outnumber their left-over male counterparts.

These figures suggest that leftover men ( sheng nan) are mainly men of the post 70s or post-80s eras, aged between 28 and 39. Among these, men with masters degrees or higher account for 37%, and 29% have a monthly income above 15,000 yuan (US$ 2,442). The equivalent figures for leftover women are 48% with a masters degree or higher and 36% with a monthly income above 15,000 yuan.

In addition, according to data from China's Sixth National Population Census, the proportion of non-married men to women of the post-80s generation is 136 to 100, while the proportion of non-married men and women of the post-70s generation has reached 206 to 100, which shows that the older the age group is, the bigger the proportion becomes.

One of the state's primary approaches to deal with the sex ratio imbalance is to intervene by encouraging unmarried adults to marry, which includes the promotion of the 'leftover' discourse and pre-marriage mobilisation.

The state inculcates in citizens the importance and the necessity of getting married at the right time. Hence the way in which the 'Leftover' women discourse is picked up and disseminated by state-owned media such as People.com and Xinhua News Agency. When using 'Baidu Indicator' (the largest search engine in China) to search with the key words 'leftover women' and 'leftover men', one can clearly see that the discourse abruptly emerged from 2008 onwards, slightly later than the release of the state edict and the seminar on China's population and family planning. The discourse is so prevalent that many women and men internalise the idea that they are 'leftover' and therefore feel the urge to marry.

The state-led, large-scale matches take place in major cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou and are organised by central government, which used to be cautious of large-scale collective activities. Since 2010 the so-called 'Shanghai grand match of 10,000 attendees' has become an annual event, getting bigger every year.

As for 'leftover' men in the rural areas, China Outlook has discussed the 'bare branches' problems and its potential consequences. Adult men with low education levels living in rural areas are less desirable in the marriage market. The government has allocated funds to research unmarried men in the rural areas, conducting surveys to explore ways in which prolonged or permanent bachelorhood impacts on society.

For example, the 'Survey on Hundreds of Villages', sponsored by the National Social Science Research Fund and endorsed as one of the 'Important Projects', explored how the aggregation of involuntary bachelors influences public security in rural communities. It found that a marriage 'squeeze' was prevalent in the rural areas, especially in Western China and that the aggregation of bachelors has a negative impact on how villagers perceive public security.

As for the public discussions online, there is a strong focus on unmarried middle class men. The largest dating website in China, Jiayuan.com, published a report on the ' Monologue of Leftover Men ', which showed that 80% of respondents who categorised themselves as 'leftover men' are college degree holders. (It should be noted that the data is biased in that most of the 'leftover' men are actually disadvantaged bachelors living in rural areas. However, it is less possible for rural men to join the public discussions both offline and online).

An online survey co-conducted by Sina and Hope Magazine, found that 48.5% of respondents thought that the primary reason why men remain single is that they are not willing to take on the responsibilities of marriage life. These respondents painted a rosy picture of middle class single men, without realising the typical 'leftover' men are those who are socially and financially disadvantaged.

The discourse of 'leftover' men and women may cause anxiety to both single men and women. However, the extent to which the discourse will encourage them to get married remains unclear. Women who choose to remain single are more likely to have high educational achievement and decent income, which is a phenomenon that can be seen in other developed East Asia countries such as Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. They are less likely to marry 'leftover men' in the rural areas, most of whom remain single, not out of choice, but because they cannot find a wife.

It is inevitable that the government will have to find other approaches to deal with the 'leftover' men problem. Options include building up a well-established pension system in the rural areas, legalising the sex industry and relaxing the policy regarding the application of foreign resident permits for transnational immigrant brides from the other developing countries.

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Finding ways to deal with China's sex-ratio imbalance

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The 11 th November has become the unofficial Single's Day in China. A few days prior to the Single's Day last year 20,000 single men and women attended a mass dating on an unprecedented scale that was organised by the state-supported All-China Women's Federation (ACWF).

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For Chinese men there are still plenty of fish in the sea, if they are just willing to share.
China's gender gap is widening and bachelors all across the country are nervously trying to find out where to find a wife and when exactly will there not be enough for everyone to go around.
One solution to the looming crisis has been put forward by Zhejiang University economics professor Xie Zuoshi, who suggests that "sharing is caring" for low-income Chinese men, as women become a hot commodity.
According to the BBC, Professor Xie proposes making a marriage a matter of wealth and desire, allowing high-income men to earn their wives, while low-income men simply share the wives left over. He writes:

Men with high incomes will have an advantage in finding women, because they can afford the high price.
And what about the low income men? One way is for several men to band together to find a wife. This isn't some pie-in-the-sky idea of mine. In some remote and poor areas there are cases where brothers jointly marry one wife, and they can live happily and harmoniously.

Obviously, not everybody is cool with Xie's proposal. His ideas have created an uproar among feminists who think his proposal is unfair and morally repugnant.
However, Professor Xie couldn't be bothered with this level of trivial debate:

Please don't talk to me about morals. If we don't let the 30 million bachelors have women, their lives would have no hope and then they may go around raping, killing, setting off bombs... (let me emphasize that this is a possibility, I'm not saying they would definitely do that). Don't tell me that is your morality?

Along with polyandry, Professor Xie puts forward a few more solutions including a wider acceptance of homosexuality and importing wives from other neighboring countries.
The National Bureau of Statistics believes that by 2020, China will have between 30 and 40 million bachelors looking for wives, due to the shortage of women caused by the one-child policy and Chinese couples' desire for a male offspring.
However, Professor Xie's modest proposal actually has a historical basis. Earlier this month, Quartz published an article explaining how in the 18th and 19th centuries in rural China, women took two (or sometimes more) husbands. This was practiced in every province of China, and for the most part, it was tolerated by the local communities.
Anyway, guys in China had better get on Tantan or get on making some dough.
By Emily Lam

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Zhejiang economics professor's plan to solve China's gender crisis: Low-income guys must share wives

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For Chinese men there are still plenty of fish in the sea, if they are just willing to share.

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Rural bachelor crisis rooted in poverty - Global Times

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The imbalanced sex ratio has caused rural marriage costs to skyrocket and left rural men cynical about their marriage prospects.

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Their marriages were arranged for cash, but some of the Vietnamese women who have found unlikely Prince Charmings in remote Chinese villages say they are living happily ever after.

Vietnamese bride Nguyen Thi Hang (left) and fellow Vietnamese bride Vu Thi Hong Thuy share a moment in a yard behind the shop where Hang works in Weijian Village, in central China's Henan Province. More than 20 Vietnamese brides have found new lives in the poverty-stricken rural township.

"Economically, life is better here in China," said Nguyen Thi Hang, one of around two dozen women from Vietnam who have married men in Linqi.

The township is a patchwork of hamlets spaced among cornfields deep in the mountains of Henan Province in central China. It is 1,700 kilometers away from Vietnam, but it's a new market for an expanding marriage trade with Southeast Asia.

The business is fueled by demand from rural Chinese men struggling to find wives.

Hang, 30, arrived in Linqi last November and struggles to communicate with customers at the dusty village store where she sells noodles, cola and cigarettes.

But her basic living conditions - a tiny bedroom with bare concrete walls, and an outdoor long-drop toilet next to a cage of chickens - are an improvement on her previous home, she said.

"We lived in a bad-quality brick house in Vietnam and were farmers so had to work hard in the rice fields," she said.

Her marriage to a local 22-year-old was arranged by her family, she said, with small ceremonies held in her hometown, and China.

"I knew they gave my family some money, but I did not dare ask my parents about that," she said.

"My relatives told me to marry a Chinese man. They told me they care for their wives, and I wouldn't have to work so much, but just enjoy life," she said, smiling at a group of children buying sweets.

Her construction worker husband spends most of the year away from the village, but her gray-haired father-in-law seemed proud of the newest addition to his family.

"Vietnamese women are just like us; they do any kind of work, and work hard," said Liu Shuanggen. "It's not easy to find wives in this place. Women are few."

It is a refrain heard across China, where families usually prefer boys to girls; now 118 males are born for every 100 females, according to government statistics.

"To get married, the bride's family will often require a car and a house, so it's easier to get married if you have more money," said shopkeeper Wang Yangfang, adding: "In Vietnam, they demand lower prices."

The typical cost for a Vietnamese woman is 20,000 yuan (US$3,200), Linqi residents said - less than a quarter of the local price, and such a bargain that more than 20 Vietnamese women have found homes in the area in recent years.

But the trade is also rife with abuses.

At a shelter in Vietnam, a dozen girls said they were tricked by relatives, friends or boyfriends and sold to Chinese men as brides.

Myanmar's government said in a 2011 report that most trafficking from the country is "committed solely with the intention of forcing girls and women into marriages with Chinese men."

Chinese police "rescued and repatriated" 1,281 abducted foreign women in 2012 alone, most of them from Southeast Asia, according to a recent news report.

Experts say lax law enforcement in rural areas means thousands of other cases probably go undiscovered.

In Linqi, several families refused to talk about their Vietnamese members, with one woman identified as being from the country shooed indoor when reporters arrived. A driver pointed out a tiny settlement nestled between intimidating peaks as a destination for bought women.

"When they arrive they'll run off after a few days," he said. "But it's not easy to run from here, because it's so mountainous, and the hills are full of relatives.

"If you go missing, the relatives will contact each other and bring you back."

It is impossible to say how many of the women are victims of trafficking.

"There are no precise figures," said Zhejiang University sociology professor Feng Gang, adding: "It's likely that the proportion of forced marriages is not large."

Nonetheless, Chinese media regularly report cases of "runaway brides" who flee shortly after their weddings. Some will have simply changed their minds, and some are scams to defraud the men of the bride price, said Feng.

Some of the marriages clearly are voluntary. The men of Linqi have traveled for work to Vietnam, where Vu Thi Hong Thuy, 21, met her husband.

"We got to know each other, fell in love and got married," she said.

"In Vietnam ... we had to work hard, but we could not earn enough. Now I think life is better as only my husband works."

A host of "Vietnam dating" websites also fuels the trade, peppered with images of Vietnamese women advertised as "kind" and "obedient."

"We charge 3,000 yuan to arrange dates in Ho Chi Minh City, and if the two decide to get married, it's an extra 36,000 to arrange the wedding - including photographs," said a staff member at one site, declining to be named.

Many also offer replacements if the new bride escapes.

"If the female partner divorces or runs away within the first two months, we are responsible for finding another partner," she added.

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'Leftover' men buy brides from Vietnam- China.org.cn

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Their marriages were arranged for cash, but some of the Vietnamese women who have found unlikely Prince Charmings in remote Chinese villages say they are living happily ever after. Vietnamese bride Nguyen Thi Hang (left) and fellow Vietnamese bride Vu Thi Hong Thuy share a moment in a yard behind the shop where Hang works in Weijian Village, in central China's Henan Province.

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Yuan Xinqiang continues to wait for his missing Vietnamese 'bride' in Nanliyue village, Handan, North China's Hebei province, Dec 11. [Photo/CFP]

The imbalance in the gender ratio of newborns in China has remained high over the past 20 years, with more than 120 male babies born for every 100 female, Beijing Youth Daily reported on Wednesday. It warns about the problem of "leftover men":

The issue of "leftover women", or those who cannot find their dream partners, has been a hot issue for years.

Though the number of "leftover men" is estimated to be up to 30 million nationwide, the issue has not received as much attention as single women in cities. That is because this group has a rather weak voice in society. While most "leftover women" work in cities, most "leftover men" live in rural regions, have little access to the Internet, and do not know what to do when they are unhappy.

"Leftover men" tend to have less education and low incomes. There is no solution to their problem, which might evolve into a deep social crisis.

The imbalanced gender has actually pushed up the cost of marriage; as a result, the economic condition of a family decides a man's marriage. It is the poor rural families where young men cannot afford big dowries that are suffering most.

Therefore, the increasingly serious problem of "leftover men" actually reflects the widening social gap between urban and rural areas. This problem is huge and most of the men are young and prone to instability.

In some sense, the problem of "leftover men" is a result of imbalanced gender ratio of newborns in the past 20 years, and society is now paying the price. It is time we corrected some wrong policies, so as to prevent similar problems in another 20 years.

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'Leftover men' in countryside reflect urban-rural gap of social wealth

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Yuan Xinqiang continues to wait for his missing Vietnamese 'bride' in Nanliyue village, Handan, North China's Hebei province, Dec 11. [Photo/CFP] The imbalance in the gender ratio of newborns in China has remained high over the past 20 years, with more than 120 male babies born for every 100 female, Beijing Youth Daily reported on Wednesday.

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You have probably heard enough about the " leftover women" phenomenon in China, as it is a problem that concerns millions of single Chinese women (and their parents) everyday. Even" leftover men ", with less pressure from family and society, have become increasingly alarmed because of the discrepancy between the number of males and females in China.

Sohu has created a great infographic illustrating and breaking down how the "leftover men" and "leftover women" phenomenon can be a risky business, which is translated into English below.
Men and Women in Danger
According to statistics from The Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China, the unmarried population in China from the age of 30 to 39 looks like this:

Men: 11,960,000

Women: 5,820,000

Starting from 2013, there will be around 1.2 million bachelors every year. By the year 2020, China will have 30 million bachelors.
"Leftover" Differences Between Men and Women
Leftover woman: High level education, high salary, "high age" (around 30 years old)

Their standard for matchmaking: The man needs to be rich. (37% women regard salary as significant)

Metropolitan areas such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, have the most leftover women.

Over 48% have a master's degree or above.

36% have a monthly salary of over 15,000 yuan.

Leftover men: 49% of them have no car, no property, a low level of education, and a low salary.

Their standard: Having beauty is good enough. (51% of males regard looks as significant)

Guangxi, Guangdong, and Jiangxi province have the most leftover men.

Over 37% have a master's degree or above.

Over 29% have a monthly salary of over 15,000 yuan, 30% have a monthly salary lower than 2,000, 16% have no income.

Why did they become leftover?
1. Unbalanced birth sex-ratio:

Traditional ideals: In rural areas, when the first born is a girl, families can have another child.

In 2012, for every 100 girls that are born, 117 boys are born. In a small village in Gansu, the number of boys per 100 girls is 209.

2. Difficulty in bridging the distance between leftover men and women:

The likelihood for a " diaosi" or leftover man to wed a higher-class leftover woman is 0%.

On the social strata, leftover men are on the bottom, often in poverty. Leftover women over 30 who cannot find a husband are on the top. Usually in a marriage, the Chinese societal concept is that the man is one level superior to the woman, so those on the top and bottom therefore are "leftover".

3. Age difference:

Often men over 30 years old seek younger women, the most common match is Mature Man & Young Woman. Thus, older women and younger men are leftover.
Five potential "killers" that endanger the lives of leftover men and women:
1. Illnesses:

Leftover women are too proud: 46% have breast hyperplasia; 41% have cervicitis.

Leftover women have low self-esteem: recurring psychological disorders.

2. Pressure: 75% are troubled by negative emotions:

3. Sexual repression:

17.5%: Have a regular sex partner

31.4%: Masturbate

21.6%: Are chronically repressed

9.8% have one-night stands, 7.8% opt for prostitution, 3.9% use sex products

4. Lifestyle:

Stay up late, insomnia, lack of sleep

Excessive smoking and drinking

Binge eating and drinking at night (which lead to intestinal diseases, fatty liver disease, and obesity)

5. Threats for the next generation:

30% miss the best age to give birth. Children of women who give birth after the age of 35 are 20 times more likely to have a mental disabilities or birth defects.

Economist Lena Edlund estimates that every 1% increase in the sex ratio leads to 6% increase in violence and property related crimes.

For both men and women, being "leftover" is a sensitive issue. Here are some netizen responses:

Based on what you just said, one knows that you are a real leftover man, and lowest of them.

Agreed, don't even reply to this kind of idiot guy.

There are still a lot of girls who don't have hukou!!!

Why do most couples want a boy? Especially in rural areas? The main reason is that a boy is responsible for taking care of the elderly and continuing the family line. Part of that is because many Chinese still have these old beliefs, and another is that in our country (rural areas especially), the only dependence for the old is their children. The state won't take care of them, they will starve if they depend on the state.

Don't make it sound so scary. Women, being single is not the worst situation. The worse situation is marrying the wrong guy. The worst situation is marrying the wrong guy and not being able to get a divorce.
Masturbation is not scary either. You are not harming the society.
Don't get married just for the sake of getting married. That definitely will be a mistake.

This is because of the distorted societal values. At school, teachers always like those with good grades, but in society, people with the best grades don't go far. At home, parents only like those who are obedient. Then after their children step into the real world, they complain that they are not smart enough, can't decide for themselves, and always listen to others. Society is filled with money, career, power and those superficial things. Actually, finding that one person is easy, just be true to yourself. But so many people add too many criteria in love and marriage, such as house, cars, career, and wealth. That's why it's become so difficult. More divorces, and more single people.

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Risky Business: Leftover Men Vs. Leftover Women (Infographics) | The World of Chinese

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You have probably heard enough about the " leftover women" phenomenon in China, as it is a problem that concerns millions of single Chinese women (and their parents) everyday. Even" leftover men ", with less pressure from family and society, have become increasingly alarmed because of the discrepancy between the number of males and females in China.