FP: Five Population Trends to Watch

Number four on Foreign Policy‘s recent “Five Population Trends to Watch” list cites China and India as leading examples of the “Too many grooms, not enough brides” trend: Military experts have a saying: Amateurs study strategy; professionals study logistics. When it comes to geopolitics, professionals study demographics…

In China, a strong preference for sons and the country’s one-child policy mean that 118 boys are being born for every 100 girls. In India, a tradition of crushing dowries and the need for a son to support parents in old age have contributed to a gender imbalance as high as 120 boys per 100 girls in some parts. When these boys grow into adults, it could set off a testosterone time bomb of sexually frustrated young men who can’t find partners. China projects that in 2020 it will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women.

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

October 5th, 2007

Gender-bending Mao

Thought that would get your attention. Last week I suggested that a certain Italian-American play Mao in an upcoming movie. Now it seems you don’t even need to be a dude to impersonate the Great Helmsman. A 51-year old woman from Sichuan named Chen Yan has been amusing crowds with her Chairman…er….woman impression.

Her biggest challenge? According to The China Daily, at 5’1 Chen needs special platform shoes to elevate her closer to the lofty heights of the historical Mao (in this case about 5’11).

May 27th, 2007

Comfort Women update, AP: "Did the Japanese set up sex stations for U.S. troops, too?"

Following up on yesterday’s post about the Japanese Supreme Court hearing two cases involving forced labor and forced prostitution. In a ruling early yesterday, the court overturned a lower court ruling awarding five laborers compensation for forced labor on Japanese construction sites. Late Friday afternoon, the court denied two Chinese women compensation despite their claims of being kidnapped and coerced to work as prostitutes by the Japanese army.*

The court acknowledged that both the women and the workers had been forced by Japanese military and industry but that neither could sue for monetary damages, claiming that Chinese citizens forfeited their rights to compensation in a 1972 joint statement between China and Japan in which “Beijing renounced war reparations from Japan, a decision supporting the government’s position that postwar agreements cleared Japan of responsibility for future individual claims.”

The landmark ruling effectively puts the kibosh on a host of similar lawsuits brought against Japan’s government and some of its leading companies by Koreans, Chinese and others forced into prostitution or slave labor. The Chinese foreign ministry–quite rightly–denounced the verdict, describing the rulings as “’illegal and invalid’ and calling the court’s interpretation of the 1972 statement as ‘arbitrary.’”

Estimates of the number

April 28th, 2007

Footbinding on NPR

NPR has a piece in this Monday’s (3/19) Morning Edition about the last few women in China with bound feet. The practice was first banned in 1912. Several other attempts to eradicate the custom followed. In the wake of the both the 1927 Northern Expedition and the 1949 establishment of the PRC, officials and cadres would go to villages and unbind women’s feet. (A process nearly as painful as the initial binding.)

There is a curious fascination in the West with footbinding in China. Certainly the fixation by the missionaries with this custom bordered on unhealthy obsession in some cases. Whatever the reason, the idea of footbinding seems to fit well into the exoticized “Orientalist” view of China popularized in film, still lingering in the Western press, and despaired of in the academy.

For those seeking the “last word” on bound feet, the brilliant historian, Dorothy Ko, has a recent (long anticipated) book on the subject: Cinderalla’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding.

March 18th, 2007

History and Memory: Japan, China, and "Comfort Women"

What a horrible euphemism: “comfort women.” Just needed to be said.

A recent article by Howard French in the IHT’s Letter from China series begins: Imagine a world where Germany denied the Holocaust, the United States denied the slaughter of Native Americans and Europe denied organizing its immensely profitable and centuries-long trans-Atlantic trade in African slaves.

Why would they bother? Presumably because they thought cleaning up these dark blots on their past would boost their self-esteem, enhance patriotism and raise their stock in the world.

Close your eyes, spin on your toes three times and reopen them to behold a world where precisely this sort of thing goes on: today’s East Asia.

There are many sore points in the relationship between China and Japan, but none so raw as World War II or, as it is known in China, the “War to Resist Japan.” This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Rape of Nanking and already more than a half-dozen movies are in the works with Woody Harrelson, and Oliver Stone, and the estate of Iris Chang among many others getting involved in different projects. When violence, sex, and nationalism come together it makes an explosive cocktail. Such

March 8th, 2007
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