ARTICLE: Population Controls, Including Abortion, Spark Gender Imbalance in China; 30 Million More Men Expected in 15 Years, Friday, FOXNews.com, January 12, 2007

Spoke of this in BFA. The "bare branches" bit is way oversold.

First, many of these males are found in rural areas. Those who can make a good life will find a wife locally or import them from elsewhere in Asia. Not an historical first and not that hard. Middle-age Japanese men already importing Chinese wives.

Second, many of these men leave in undocumented fashion. Baby girls aborted or given up for adoption, but unattached males often sneak out as economic refugees in their early adulthood, which makes males the biggest village export from China right now (well-documented in NYT).

Third, by 2020 China will see 100 million of its citzens travel abroad each year, so personal access to foreign women hardly restricted.

Fourth, the notion of Chinese society casually sending off single sons to war is BS. In China they call it the 4-2-1 problem: 4 grandparents, 2 parents, one son to support all.

Fifth, China's PLA is moving away from bodies to capital, so little desire there to pack them up for war.

Sixth, the notion of social distress is mitigated by rising incomes, which facillitates for successful males the opportunities described above, and for unsuccessful ones, the chance to emmigrate (again, something that happens a lot).

Demographers tell us numbers but their track record on predicting social responses is very weak.

Bigger issue in my mind is rising elder population, mostly rural. To me, the excess-males-means-war scenario is yet another example of analysts trying to hold on to the China enemy image they so desperately desire. China has gone through, is going through now, and will go through in the future, so many harder issues that I tend to downplay the alleged profoundity of this trend. If China wasn't seeing so many rural males emmigrating now and wasn't opening up so much (to include a rapid rethink on sending off "unwanted daughters" (a historical blip soon to disappear as more childless Chinese couples begin to value girls more)), then I'd be worried, but all those things are happening.

Thanks to the reader who sent this in who might wish to remain nameless.