Chinese Society & Economy
Personal view on one of the social issues modern China is facing in the future: Single Men
China is facing a lot of problems in the future that it is somehow trying to fix. Besides many more the main problems range from und unequal development of China’s countryside and it’s cities, environmental issues, economic issues, the extreme generation gap between the old and young as a result of the Cultural Revolution and the upcoming consequences of it’s ‘One- Child- Policy’.
As the Chinese population was growing too fast the Chinese Government introduced a policy in 1979 that asked their nation – depending on region/ circumstances- to limit the childbirth to only one child per family.
In the west a policy like this would have started an outrage of society, yet the Chinese just had to accept, trust and follow.
The problem with this new rule is that due to cultural backgrounds and history there was a heavy preference to give birth to a boy, rather than a girl. Even though it was technically illegal to determine the gender before birth, people would find a way to find out whether their child was going to be male or female. Corruption and bribes are very common, so the ‘One- Child- Policy’ consequently lead to a mass- abortion of baby girls.
This drastic policy and the mass- abortions combined caused a huge gender gap, which will, by 2020, leave and estimated 30 million men to never find love because of a shortage in women, and ‘The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ claims the gender imbalance among newborns as the most serious demographic problem for the country’s population of about 1.3 billion people (Global Times).
Normal male- female ratios should be around 103-107 men for every 100 women, however in 2005 (which is also the last year this data was made available and not censored) there were 119 baby boys to every 100 baby girls. Even worse than that is that the ratio in...