'My parents say hurry up and find a girl': China's millions of lonely 'leftover men'

[Tennis]

https://www.theguardian.com/inequali...y-leftover-men

When Liu returned to his childhood village to celebrate Chinese New Year, his parents had arranged a familiar and depressing task for him: a series of speed dates. Over a week back in rural Jiangxi province, he met half a dozen potential wives in encounters he says felt more like job interviews. He expects to go through the same process next year, without much hope of success.

For Jin, who works with Liu in the factories of China’s Pearl River Delta, the cajoling matchmaker was his second cousin. “My cousin brought [the date] to meet me in a public square in the village, then left us together,” Jin recalls. “A few minutes in, this girl made it clear that owning an apartment would be essential, but she could wait till later for a car. And she’d be OK if the apartment wasn’t in the centre of the town, but I had to have a deposit of at least 200,000 yuan [about £22,500].”

In recent years, the patriarchal Chinese state has launched campaigns warning unmarried urban females over the age of 27 of the perils of becoming “leftover women”. But in reality – due to sex-selective abortions, a traditional preference for sons and the country’s one-child policy – there’s a far larger cohort of “leftover men”.

Official state media put the male-to-female ratio at 136:100 among unmarried people born since the 1980s. Professor Jin Tiankui, an influential sociologist in China’s policy-making circle, predicts that by 2020 there will be 30 million more men than women in the 24–40 age bracket.

Liu and Jin blame their lack of romantic success on their low social status as migrant workers from rural provinces. The state says there are about 278 million others like them, the backbone of the country’s wildly successful manufacturing, construction and service industries. They embody the nation’s most intractable problems of inequality – loneliness included.

In 2010, the main state-endorsed union surveyed thousands of rural migrants in 10 cities across the country, concluding that “the defining aspect of the migrant experience” is a sense of loneliness due to a lack of romantic prospects. A separate survey found that more than 70% of construction workers (almost exclusively rural migrants) reported emotional loneliness as the most painful aspect of their lives.

Liu is 33 and lonely. As a teenager he left school to help his parents on their farm, but soon ventured south to Shenzhen on the border with Hong Kong, hoping to make more money. When I first met him he was working 12 hours a day, six days a week assembling iPhones at one of the Foxconn plants where Jin now works.

Without advanced education, Liu is only qualified for insecure, low-skilled jobs. The long hours and low pay make the practicalities of dating more daunting. “It’s not because I’m a shy person. I just don’t have enough money to feel confident,” he tells me. “When a man has money, every woman feels destined to be his girlfriend.”


Roughly two-thirds of the migrant workforce is aged under 35. I’ve interviewed dozens of men like Liu and Jin in Shenzhen, and most have little interest in rural life in villages that have been left behind by China’s economic boom. But their prospects for settling in big cities are little better than those of previous generations. They’re unlikely to earn enough to own a home or even a car, prerequisites to be considered marriage material by the urban middle class. Access to the tertiary education which can unlock better paying jobs is restricted by fiercely competitive entrance exams, where many young rural men are unsurprisingly outshone by their well-resourced urban counterparts.

Increasingly, even workers in their late teens and early 20s are feeling the pressure. “These days, the only reason my parents call me is to tell me to hurry up and find a girlfriend. I’ve stopped answering their calls,” says Jiang, a 22-year-old Foxconn worker from Sichuan province.


Lacking financial independence, young rural migrants rely on their parents for emotional and practical support more than their urban educated counterparts. They’re less likely to object to their parents arranging speed dates, or ultimately choosing them a partner and negotiating the caili (dowry payment).

This old tradition, banned in the era of Mao, has made a comeback in rural China. There are a number of reasons: the embrace of capitalist and entrepreneurial values; the imbalanced ratio of men to women, which drives a sellers market; and the persistence of patriarchal values which consider women to be properties, owned first by their parents and then their husband. The bride’s family would be seen to be getting a raw deal – losing both face and a rare opportunity for considerable economic gain – if a fee was not part of the bargain. The amount could range from the equivalent of a few thousand to tens of thousands of pounds, and often proves to be a deal breaker in these negotiations.

Even if a match is made, things don’t always end well. Hasty weddings can lead to hasty divorces; in one county in Henan province, up to 85% of all divorces in the period from 2013 to 2015 involved rural migrant couples. The government has signalled its concern about high divorce rates and “temporary couples” – made up of individuals who marry in their villages and then return to cities to form separate romantic relationships there.

In a one-party state that values social stability above all, this growing cohort of millions of disaffected and sexually frustrated young men is an unwelcome development. In a rare move, the Chinese Communist Party used an official policy document to declare its intention to “step up efforts to solve the problems facing second-generation rural migrant workers”.

Of course, loneliness affects migrant women and men alike, and women suffer in myriad ways from broken relationships and disintegrated families. But it’s the image of sexually deprived migrant men that figures prominently in the state’s anxious imagination. There’s an obvious link between angry young men and social unrest, and history points to a connection between frustrated marital aspirations and upheaval, such as the tension caused by the demonisation of poor unmarried men by the Qing dynasty ruling class.

Mao and his crew really screwed tens of millions of Chinese with their one child policy. Such a shame. Hopefully one day soon they can be rid of the Communist Party and get proper leadership.

[Daneman]

@bungeebungee
@Freighter
@lightspark

[Freighter]

@bungeebungee
@Freighter
@lightspark

Why do you mention me?

[Video Games]

Why do you mention me?

Cause you china woomanz oo oo oo

[Avar ize]

They can pull their head out of their ass and get a woman outside of China tho if it is that hard, no reason to be lonely.

[Nihilist74]

China needs to start a big war to kill off their excessive amount of men like america does.

[Tennis]

Why do you mention me?

Probably so you can go off to China and get married I reckon.

[Halyon]

They can pull their head out of their ass and get a woman outside of China tho if it is that hard, no reason to be lonely.

Don't think they're in on the whole paying fees to marry out of status and shit...

[bowchikabow]

And just like that... oh, wait. I still don't see feminists protesting this. But remember, the US is the real patriarchy, right?

[shadowmouse]

OK, I'll bite. It isn't as if I haven't linked quite a few articles on this over the years. Disclaimer -- as Tennisace knows, I live and work in China and I'm getting married here.

Why do you mention me?

Given discussions in other threads, I'd guess it is because while you are not mainland Chinese you may have a different take on this situation than perhaps a woman from France would.

They can pull their head out of their ass and get a woman outside of China.

Although some are finding brides from SE Asia, it is a bit more complicated than that. China is damned big, guys working in the center of China probably don't have passports (no reason to) and don't have much opportunity to get out of the country. These are also the guys who, like the fellow in the article, left school early and have little education. Many of them don't even speak Chinese well (they speak a local dialect) and that makes it much harder for them to interact with anyone who isn't from their home region. Related to that is the problem that some of those regions still have close ties to their local culture and traditions, and they don't really have a mindset that accommodates differences.

Hopefully one day soon they can be rid of the Communist Party and get proper leadership.

They have it Ace, it's just another thing in the world that doesn't follow your dictate. China is barely 100 years out from its feudal period. The country itself is large, and in some situations geography has tended to leave some regions hard to reach, creating backwaters. As I noted above, China is hardly the monolithic hive mind that people who are unfamiliar with it seem to assume. There are very strong regional characteristics. Geographic isolation (one expression here is "the mountains are high and the Emperor is far away], cultural attitudes towards authority, and local identity have tended to lead to the rise of local warlords rather than democracy. Although the PRC is described as a "communist" country, it is communist with (as they say) Chinese characteristics. In practice, this means that to an outside observer the actual function of the government today is very similar to what would have arisen if the imperial civil service had simply replaced the nobility.

As education and infrastructure make their mark on rural China, some of the local excesses are being reined in and there are slow adjustments to give the population more ability to influence local policies. For now, what China has works for them.

Mao and his crew really screwed tens of millions of Chinese with their one child policy.

If I recall, official doctrine is that Mao was 70% right. Note, for example, that even this article mentions bride price was something Mao tried to do away with. The gender imbalance has some relationship to the One Child Policy, but that was a response (in part) to a tradition that saw large families as a way for the family to draw on the resources of multiple children in a fashion similar to financial pyramid schemes. By itself, the One Child Policy should not have created today's gender imbalance. That was something created by old fashioned, traditional thinking that valued male children over female children to the point that female infanticide was common even in the 19th century (still during the feudal period) and sex selective abortions simply took that further. Mao was far from a saint, but some of the things that he did were attempts to break the hold of feudal traditions that are making a comeback even today. Those are also things that the CCP continues to try to strike a balance with.

With that said, the One Child Policy had abuses, but there were also exceptions. I know quite a few Chinese women who have siblings -- for example, my fiancee is the middle of three sisters. On the other hand, I have a former student who is from a fishing village and her father was the part time policeman there. He came home early one day, by good luck, and found her grandmother putting her in a box to send her to Hong Kong so that he could try again for a son. Notice that it was the grandmother, her parents didn't have a problem with having a daughter and they went through considerable effort to raise her despite her having health issues when she was a child. They also made sure that she received a good education.

[schwarzkopf]

They can pull their head out of their ass and get a woman outside of China tho if it is that hard, no reason to be lonely.

Lack of money is the barrier to the happiness of many.

[Tennis]

Great thread. I actually came across this video which shows just how dire the situation is.

The bachelors are called " bare branches"
@Mistame

[Mittens]

https://www.theguardian.com/inequali...y-leftover-men



Mao and his crew really screwed tens of millions of Chinese with their one-child policy. Such a shame. Hopefully one day soon they can be rid of the Communist Party and get proper leadership.

The communist party screwed the entirety of China and there is absolutely no reason for their existence, beyond suppressing dissidents.

[Seranthor]

Mao and his crew really screwed tens of millions of Chinese with their one child policy. Such a shame. Hopefully one day soon they can be rid of the Communist Party and get proper leadership.

Why would you bash the Chinese for trying to contain their population growth? Would you rather they had 2-3 kids and had them starve to death? how heartless can you be?

[Annamarine]

LOL Mao didn't abort a female baby just because the parents wanted a male

[Guyv3r]

He's probably better off single.

[Spiral Mage]

Well I mean ... it's China, it's pretty much what you expect there.

[Deleted]

The danger of china becoming a almighty wizard power house is inevitable. Let's hope that they will overcome their 3D needs and succumb to 2D or sex-robots. For if they explore their power and expand it there is no say what will happen to this world.

[Deleted]

I wonder what this does to the women in China.

I mean, being in high demand because of scarcity can't really create pleasant people, can it?
They can demand pretty much anything they want and I guess the poorest single men will have zero chance.

[Uzkin]

China's one-child policy was most likely the correct choice at the time, to prevent uncontrollable population growth. Now that their birth-rate is under control, China has been able to ease this policy as well as to make it more lucrative for couples to have a girl. Thus, the "leftover men" problem should go away in the future.

In general, excessive population growth problems only occur in the developing countries; it is a problem that fixes itself once the gender equality, education, and standard of living in the country in question reach high enough levels. China can probably, in a decade or two, get rid of their birth-rate control policies entirely without encountering an unsustainable population boom again.