rural bachelor crisis rooted in poverty
2016-03-09
When it comes to leftover men crisis in China, people generally think of around unmarried men in urban areas, who have well-paid jobs but are picky in choosing their matches. In cities, leftover men are no big deal if they can lower their marriage criterion to some degree. However, in rural places, the bachelor crisis is worrisome: the reason rural men stay single is not because they feel loath to get married, but because they have to be bachelors. When rural areas accumulate a gigantic number of leftover men, the negative consequences like the trafficking of women and sexual violence can't be ignored.
Recently, an investigative report by China Youth Daily brought the rural bachelor crisis into the spotlight. The report notes, quoting a marriage broker, a rural woman meeting dozens of men a day for matchmaking purposes during the Spring Festival is not rare and the scarcity of rural women is too unimaginable to satisfy rural men's marriage demand.
The rural bachelor crisis has been frequently reported in recent years, but the severity of the crisis is much worse in statistics than media coverage has shown. The main reason is the imbalanced sex ratio, according to sociologists.
China's natal sex ratio of males to females reached 113.51 to 100 in 2015, higher than the international warning line of 107. In the past two decades, the ratio even peaked at 120, meaning six boys for every five girls.
The skewed sex ratio has mainly happened in rural areas thanks to the tradition of regarding boys as superior to girls and the harsh implementation of the one-child policy in urban places.
Competition for women among rural men has turned fierce. Given that rural men are always at the bottom rung of the marriage ladder because of their low economic status, the percentage of unmarried men in rural areas is higher than in urban areas. Statistics show that nearly 20 million leftover men out of 30 million unmarried Chinese men in total are from rural villages.
The imbalanced sex ratio has caused rural marriage costs to skyrocket and left rural men cynical about their marriage prospects. About 10 years ago, a washing machine, refrigerator, and a set of furniture could still be considered as trendy betrothal gifts for a rural marriage. Lamentably, currently, it is not uncommon for rural women to demand males to purchase urban apartments and private cars, in addition to offering their new mother-in-laws a fat red envelope.
The materialism of rural marriage has overshadowed rural males' own wealth, hence family money is playing and will still play an important role in obtaining successful marriage.
The rural bachelor crisis is not just a matter of demographic concern, but will pose a critical challenge to social harmony. The army of unmarried men will result in social problems and a higher crime rate.
The skewed sex ratio wouldn't necessarily have resulted in the rural bachelor crisis, had rural places not been impoverished for long. A skewed sex ratio can be actually leveled and averaged through a freely moving population.
Nevertheless, this leveling process can't be achieved in rural areas. Instead, the exorbitant outflow of rural women, who swarm into urban areas for better opportunities and expect to improve their destiny by marrying urban males, has intensified the crisis.
Focusing on alleviating the crisis, the government should mitigate rural leftover men's sense of relative deprivation by helping them improve their economic status, narrowing down the rural-urban disparity and uprooting the soil of rural poverty.
One fundamental cause of the crisis is rural poverty and backwardness, a byproduct of the gap between the urban and rural economies. Only with accurate poverty reduction measures in place will rural leftover men become rich enough to marry their women.
I have a question，perhaps the rural bachelor crisis will have been solved ,then ,how about the bachelor crisis in urban?The harsh implementation of the one-child policy in urban places.....What is the suitable solution and what is the balance bewteen the rural and the urban?There lies a debate.
Yes but if educated and independent then the female will already have interests outside of home and not all poor men want children and less will in future. With stability most men are marrying less educated and poorer females so it is just the same thing in reverse.
Similar life goals and interests are important for a stable relationship and/or a stable marriage.
A lot of relationship conflict is based on dissimilarities and differences in expectations and goals.
A relationship that involves conflict a lot of the time is not one that will last.
Most of these men will (culturally) be looking for marriage and a child.
They will be unlikely to look at a woman (yes WOMAN, not a FEMALE) with a higher level of education, but a woman who will be satisfied in making a home for them and raising a child, and not having many interests outside of these things.
Yes, people can be ignorant in different ways.
But for some reason some men tend to be threatened by educated independent women and their life choices, and quickly resort to name-calling and trying to shame and humiliate them rather than accept that women don't have to conform to 'traditional' roles anymore.
I have met and worked with many men who are confident in themselves and they can accept and share a woman's goals and life choices without feeling the need to put them down.
Sadly in China the drive to conform to traditional gender roles are still very strong and the under-valuing of women in the past has resulted in the gender imbalance there is now.
Also, I wrote
'Or wants HER to remain an ignorant baby-machine'
- there was no mention of calling men 'ignorant baby-machines'.
Sometimes poor uneducated men are decent looking and a lot of fun and great company. Similar life goals are not particularly important. Since educated Chinese females have their own security I think that more and more of them will be open to relationships with uneducated men and not just from China. Plus not all relationships need to come to marriage. Plus all people are ignorant in different ways and I do not see why you call uneducated men ignorant baby machines. That is highly offensive.
The fundamental cause of the problem is because there are 30 million fewer women than men caused by the sex-selection prior to birth.
Poor levels of education of men does not help either.
What educated woman would want to marry a man who is doesn't share similar life goals?
Or wants her to remain an ignorant baby-machine?
Single women are not under any obligation to marry just because some men are single.
And women should not be forced by ANYONE (including their families) to marry against their wishes.
The original post was spot on.
How about this then. Poor Chinese should marry chicks from very poor African nations. A poor rural Chinese would be able to offer a poor African chick a better life than some poor African guy from a poor nation right?
Poor Chinese should go for poor Africans from very poor African nations.
Thanks for sharing your story here, we have highlighted it in our blog homepage.
YES,I AGREE YOUR ABOVE OPINIONS.
THUS MANY LEFTOVER MENS IN RURAL IS HARDER AND HARDER TO MARRY IN COMING YEARS.
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