Mara Hvistendahl writes in The New Republic this week about the possibilities of future unrest and social ills as unintended consequences of China’s One Child Policy. I wrote a little something about this last year:
There are many factors that can contribute to social instability and political unrest, but having a large population of young, underemployed, and unmarried males is a big one. By way of example, I give you the Old “Wild” West in the United States, rural China in the mid- to late-19th century, and Sanlitun’r on any given Saturday night.
Ms. Hvistendahl concurs:
In the 2020s, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Zheng Zhenzhen, estimates in a People’s Daily interview that 10 percent of Chinese men will be unable to find wives, which could have a huge impact on Chinese society. Historian David Courtwright suggests in Violent Land that sexually segregated societies in the United States–frontier towns flush with unmarried men, immigrant ghettos in early twentieth-century cities, mining camps–are behind our propensity toward violence. The immigrants and westward migrants who shaped early America, Courtwright says, were largely young single men, who are– today as well as then–disproportionately responsible for drug abuse, looting, vandalism, and violent crime. A long-term study of Vietnam veterans in 1998 may explain exactly why: The subjects’ testosterone levels, which are linked to aggression and violence, dropped when they married and increased when they divorced. Eternally single men, by extension, maintain high levels of testosterone–a recipe for violent civil unrest.
I’ve heard some crazy things about the growing gender gap in rural areas, and while doom and gloom ‘lock up your daughter’ scenarios with gangs of young guang’gun 光棍 raiding villages and pillaging the countryside are far fetched to say the least, Ms. Hvistendahl’s article does suggest that we might only be seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the long range effects of the One Child Policy.
Personal anecdote/completely unscientific observation: Once while sitting in a local McDonald’s, my friend and I watched one of these spoiled little emperors being doted upon mom, dad, and two sets of grandparents catering to his every whim. My friend and I wondered two things:
1) What are the chances, 20 years hence, of any woman being able to make him happy?
2) What happens when a whole generation of these spoiled little rugrats grows up and the first entity to ever tell them “no” or deny them something turns out to be the Chinese government?
I’m just saying…
14 responses so far ↓
1 Scott Loar // Jul 10, 2008 at 12:37 pm
And the American military is surely wondering about the time when a young man in his late teens or early 20’s becomes effective head of the Chinese military 30 years from now, officered by similar men of similar spoiled background and similar frustrations.
2 Sam G // Jul 10, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Interesting predictions, though I’d be hesitant to draw such a direct correlation between population disparities and any massive crises in the future. There are so many other things that people have to be angry about!
3 davesgonechina // Jul 10, 2008 at 7:20 pm
I think it’s an awful big leap to say that a kid spoiled rotten at the age of 7 is going to be just like that two decades later. Are you really just an adult version of your primary school self? There’s alot of learning about real life, difficulties and failure in those intervening years, and there’s gonna be alot of work for them to do.
These kids are being doted on, but their elders are part of a growing wave of gray. I don’t think that Little Emperors are a break from the tangled web of family obligations that dominate so much Chinese family life, and the pressure to succeed in school and work, as well as marriage, is going to define huge chunks of their lives. I have to reiterate what I pointed out last time we both blogged on this: that based on one of the very studies cited in the Den Boer/Hudson paper that brought the bare branches theory to prominence, the increasing ratio of older men to younger in China over the next 20 years ought to *diminish* the potential for violence, not increase it, though DB and Hudson take it out of context to make precisely that claim.
http://www.mutantpalm.org/2007/10/30/chinas-future-clockwork-orange.html
And pretty soon they’re gonna be getting alot of “nos” in the course of high school, their first jobs, etc. I’m pretty sure before they get out of their teens they’ll have gotten more than a good dose of disappointment and denied gratification, long before they have any political feelings that extend beyond “jia you”.
There’s plenty of marriages across China that are less about finding someone who makes you happy and more about checking “marriage” off the to-do list, or making ma and ba happy.
I’m not saying there won’t be any increase in conflict, tension or political upheaval. But I see plenty of counterexamples that posit a different future, and no compelling reason to believe this one.
4 Jeremiah // Jul 10, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Dave always a pleasure to have you comment.
Yeah, at the risk of going 10 rounds about this again, I took pains in the post to mute any notion of a ‘doomsday guang’gun scenario’ and the latter two points were, to be honest, a bit tongue in cheek rather than useful sociological data.
That said, while counterexamples exist, so do actual examples, and though neither can conclusively predict the future (what can?), I don’t think anyone can completely dismiss the possibility of long range unintended social consequences of varying severity, do you?
5 davesgonechina // Jul 10, 2008 at 7:50 pm
@J: I don’t wanna go ten rounds either. As I said, I’m not completely dismissing it. As for the examples given in the TNR article and the DBH paper, I remain unconvinced that they prove much of anything about a correlation between male surplus and increased major conflict, and I find the whole thing far too reductionist.
I’d much prefer to see more comprehensive reporting on the nature of growing up in todays China, and how that may be different or the same for future generations, of which the gender ratio would indisputably be a part, but it should be that: a piece of the puzzle, along with the still powerful (at least in my neck of the woods) gravitational pull of traditional institutions of the family and the educational system, and the rapidly evolving process of “growing up” in China. Something more than simply yet another article on yet another possible cause of instability in China, as if instability were something new.
6 Jeremiah // Jul 10, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Dave,
Fair enough, and I do think that your posts on the subject have been insightful correctives on the more alarmist writings in the mainstream press on this subject.
I freely admit, too, that studying the late 19th and early 20th century has perhaps skewed my views on the subject as the ‘guang’gun’ phenomenon was very much a part of the Qing-era rebellions as well as fodder for later warlord armies.
7 Cao Meng De // Jul 11, 2008 at 2:16 am
Most young men who joined Nien Rebellion of late Qing are “surplus” younger sons who were excluded from family inheritance as were Spanish conquistadors. They were usually kicked out of their fathers’ houses and domicile with other young men of similar background.
Only genetic legacy for 6 people (parents and grandparents) do not make good cannon fodders. Political opposition will be too great. A good argument for top PLA generals to pressure the gov to quietly drop the “one-child” policy.
8 Scott Loar // Jul 11, 2008 at 6:41 am
樓上, good point.
9 wu ming // Jul 11, 2008 at 7:07 am
another major factor in the phenomenon of guang’gun, in the past and today, is poor men’s inability to afford wives, and the pattern of effective polygyny at the top of society, paired inevitably with single men at the bottom (and, as matt sommers convincingly argued, effective polyandry, be it informally or via prostitution).
likewise, one of the great sources of popular support of the communist revolution was the securing of wives for poor male peasants, who were shut out of the marriage market in the status quo ante.
maids, concubines, prostitutes, second and third wives, erniang, “girlfriends,” all of them reflect a hypergamous shift upwards of those poor men’s female equivalents up the class ladder.
granted, all of this treats people as objects in a schema instead of the human beings just trying to make ends meet in the messiness that is life in china, but it’s worth pointing out that blaming the one child policy unintentionally lets china’s neoliberal reforms - taking place at the very same historical moment - off the hook.
as for spoiled chinese kids, i’m not sure that we’re looking at the big picture; for every stuffed-fat upper middle class xiao huangdi, there are several lower class or rural migrant children who aren’t exactly getting the same pampered treatment. and unless i’m missing something, chinese adolescents don’t tend to experience the same sort of indulgent manner of childrearing as is childhood.
as with the topic of nationalism, i’m not exactly sure that americans really have the grounds for pointing fingers at chinese society when it comes to spoiled kids. or, for that matter, spoiled middle aged adults.
10 chriswaugh_bj // Jul 11, 2008 at 7:14 am
Jeremiah, re your little anecdote: On seeing such a scene, I wouldn’t be so worried about that particular guanggun. That’s a recipe for morbid obesity and all its resultant health problems by the time he’s 20, so even if he does turn fenqing, he won’t be capable of acting on his anger.
What concerns me more is a scene I saw two days ago: Ma, Ba and two of Ba’s friends and their two kids- daughter about 2 and son not yet 1. The parents seemed to be only capable of scolding and slapping the daughter, and as a result, all she could do was cry and grizzle. I don’t even want to speculate on the possible results, but I suspect in more conservative rural areas where Han are allowed a second child if the first is a girl or disabled, such sights may well be distressingly common.
11 Peony // Jul 14, 2008 at 8:55 am
To chime in– completely agreed with Dave’s comment, and also wondered if in addition to everything else, the whole world has to raise children the American way as well. As Dave pointed out, children are not necessarily raised the same way and pressures to become independent start in at different times in different cultures.
In Japan, as well, “foreigners” talk on and on about how Japanese children are “doted on” (and there is no one-child policy here
either)– but the fact is, Japanese in turn are surprised how American teenagers are indulged. The screws will be tightened as the “indulged” child heads toward high school and college– so not to worry, I’d say!
I am getting ready to travel to the Western part of the Empire and as soon as I arrive, I know I have to keep my own “doting” instincts at bay lest I offend the natives back in California. It’s hard since I do like to dote on his ever whim– he’s so darn cute!
Over and Out from Peony Land!
12 Jeremiah // Jul 14, 2008 at 9:00 am
Just to clarify:
I don’t think the One Child Policy is a good example for the relative worth and value of cultural practices, it was a state-imposed mandate that specified harsh fines and worse for many women and families and, at best, could be considered a massive experiment in social engineering.
I do not deny the end result has slowed population growth to more environmentally sustainable levels, but I suppose it depends on whether or not we believe that end is justified by the means.
Some do. Some don’t.
13 peony // Jul 14, 2008 at 12:37 pm
“I don’t think the One Child Policy is a good example for the relative worth and value of cultural practices,”
Agreed, and that’s why I thought your post would have been more productive without the bit on “doting” one-child policy parents” since in all probabilty the same Chinees parents would be doting on their children even if they had 2 or 3. Right or wrong…
This issue, to my mind, has little to do with the moral right or wrong of one parent policy– as it falls more in the column of “parenting styles,” don’t you think?
Peony
14 NateT // Jul 15, 2008 at 2:24 am
I saw plenty of doting when I lived in Taiwan. The difference between the Taizhong area (where I lived for most of my time there) and Beijing (where I lived for a year or so) was that the doting was concentrated on the one child instead of being more spread between two or perhaps three (the norm in Taiwan). Grandparents often had a further spread their doting time. In other words, if there was some kind of doting measure, Urban China would probably have the higher score. What this means for the future, who knows?
As to the historic context, mid and late Ming gentry writings about Fujian often noted the prevalence of female infanticide in the province and the prevalence of unmarried men who often worked as hired farm hands. As the agricultural economy went south piracy along the coast went up. One of the most commonly cited attributes of unmarried men is risk taking, something I found in a variety of literature, from anthropology, to psychology, to finance. Piracy is fits the risk profile associated with single, poor, men. I am not saying these two were directly linked, but rather the excess of males in Ming Fujian was a factor, perhaps a large one, in the rise of piracy on the coast.
And yes, the larger percentage of older men will add an element of stability to China as a whole. But having a large amount, in real numbers, of men denied what has been, historically, one of the more effective ways to tie males into the social structure, creates a very dangerous situation, especially if unmarried men are concentrated in certain areas, when combined with other trends, like rising oil prices that are causing companies to redesign supply chains away from China ( a trend that began even before $4 gas, btw), the loss of the lowest bracket of labor to Vietnam and other Asian countries, etc. which makes life that much harder for the poor, unmarried man.
Having a large amount of unmarried, unemployed men in any particular area creates a kind of social kindling in a society like China where bringing grievances against, say, a contractor who withholds wages, is extremely difficult, or working conditions where the poorest labor are scant, e.g. mines, and reporters routinely take bribes to cover up stories (see the latest edition of Forbes for a good report on this, ttp://www.forbes.com/media/forbes/2008/0721/038.html ) and local legal enforcement of these rules is also avoided with cash.
Leave a Comment