Professor has solution for China’s millions of bachelors

Picasso · Oct 23, 2015

Brilliant! Promiscuity, adultery and gay sex! :biggrin:

Economics professor has solution for China’s millions of bachelors: let them share wives, or even marry each other

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 22 October, 2015, 7:01pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 22 October, 2015, 8:07pm

Zhuang Pinghui
[email protected]

Economics professor Xie Zoushi said it has been a practice in rural areas for brothers to share wives. File photo

With China facing the prospect of 30 million unmarried men by 2020, an economics professor has proposed a solution – allow poor bachelors to share a wife.

Xie Zuoshi, a professor at Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, said it was a practical way for the nation to deal with the legacy of decades of an abnormally high sex ratio.

China has long had a traditional preference for boys over girls that has, if anything, increased under the one-child policy.

The birth ratio of boys compared with girls has been rising steadily, peaking in 2009 before dropping to 1.16 in 2014. The normal gender ratio at birth for China is between 1.02 to 1.07 boys born for every girl.

Between 24 million to 34 million more boys than girls were born in the past three decades, and most are unlikely to find wives, at least in China.

“It is a reality that we have so many more men than women. Serious social problems, such as rape and assaults, will happen if men cannot find wives. But it doesn’t have to be like that if they are given choices,” said Xie, who said he saw the problem from an economics point of view.

In terms of supply and demand, the rising number of bachelors had increased the scarcity of women and raised their value. Men with high incomes find wives first because they can afford to look after them. For low income men, one option is to a wife with another man.

“I am not joking. Any reasonable person applying critical thinking will come to the same conclusion. We can not deprive those men of wives just to be moral,” Xie said, saying it was already a practice in poor rural areas for brothers to share a wife.

Xie is 50 years old and married.

Another option is for women in other countries in Asia, such as in Vietnam, to come to China to get married.

He even proposed that China to changed its laws that made monogamy the only legal form of marriage. Sharing or even gay marriage should also be allowed, he said.

Xie’s proposal was not well received online with many questioning his moral stand. Yet Xie said he also received some support .

One said he agreed with Xie even though many criticised him because in his hometown it was common in rural areas before 1949 to have a bachelor living with a couple to share the wife and economic burden of the family.

Another said marriage was a private matter and should depend on the consent of the parties involved.

Absolutely · Oct 23, 2015

one mad professor

gingerlyn · Oct 23, 2015

how to share wife?
and the children? who is the father?
some men are not suitable to have children and or married.

Agoraphobic · Oct 23, 2015

This is a humongous massive problem!!!! Whoever has to deal with this - good luck! No matter how good the economy is, how modern one's military is, how efficient your factories are, how do you cope with this????

Cheers!

Picasso said:
..................With China facing the prospect of 30 million unmarried men by ..................

Patriot · Oct 23, 2015

[h=2]Professor Sparks Anger Proposing Polygamy and Gay Marriage for China’s Millions of Bachelors[/h]

By Chen Shen (People's Daily Online)

04:58, October 23, 2015

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File photo: Professor Xie Zuoshi

The birth ratio of boys compared with girls in China has been rising steadily, peaking in 2009 before dropping to 1.16 in 2014.

Studies anticipated that at least 20 percent of men will be unable to marry in mid-21 century. By 2020, China will see 30 million unmarried men.

An economics professor has a unique, economic perspective: Chinese bachelors shall be allowed to share wives and marry each other.

Xie Zuoshi, an economics professor at Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, said, “In terms of supply and demand, the rising number of bachelors has deepened the scarcity of women, whose value is increased consequently.

Men with high incomes find wives firstbecause they can afford to take care of their women. For those who are earning less, one option is to share a wife with another man,” Xie wrote on his blogpost.

He also proposedthat China shall make polygamy and gay marriage legal, or encourage men marrying women from other countries.

Xie’s comment immediately sparked heated debate online.

Many netizens were offended and raised questions on his moral standard.

mojito · Oct 23, 2015

Rape is also a solution. So is surrogate mothers. Like that I can also be PhD. :rolleyes:

Happyhour · Oct 23, 2015

Ask krafty go to meet all of them. If each of them pay krafty 2 cents to poke his backside then krafty sure damn rich man.

lifeafter41 · Oct 23, 2015

gingerlyn said:
how to share wife?
and the children? who is the father?
some men are not suitable to have children and or married.

It is easy for him (this professor) to say.
since he is married, maybe should ask him if he is willing to share his wife with 4 others.
And if he has a daughter, if he is willing to married off his daughter to 5 men, everyday, taking turns.........
And if he has a son, if he is willing to let his son share with 4 other men, his son's wife and then do not know who, who the bastard son/daughter belongs to, apart from taking a paternity test to determine.

Short of asking women to become a sex slave........ss what he is suggesting.

Vivendi · Oct 26, 2015

Polyandry could solve China's bachelor surplus, says economist

Staff Reporter 2015-10-25 09:13

Xie Zuoshi. (Internet photo)

Chinese economist and professor Xie Zuoshi has proposed that the country solve its gender imbalance by allowing women to have multiple husbands, reports Shanghai-based news outlet the Paper.

The only other option is for Chinese men to seek partners outside of their country, since there are simply too many bachelors. Single men in their prime will still number 30-35 million until 2020, at which time the gender ratio will be severely imbalanced, according to an analyst.

Wealthier men have a better shot at finding a life partner than those with less financial clout, so there is always the practical option of sharing a wife, or polyandry, for the average white and blue collar worker, said the economist. To trim the burden, China could also consider legalizing gay marriage and prostitution. Thousands of gay men in China are believed to marry women because of pressure from their parents — wasteful in terms of tying women down who might otherwise have a chance of a happy family life, the economist would no doubt argue.

Meanwhile, legalizing prostitution would mean that those men who find themselves unable to settle down and start a family can at least satisfy their sexual needs, Xie said. "It's a fact that we can't do anything about it in the short term. Clearing out the men is more important than leaving too many single men. If society is unwilling to accept any of these solutions, we will only be left with social instability."

Response on the internet was less than enthusiastic. "This is ridiculous. I can't believe that you are a college professor," said one netizen. "Where do you put women's rights? To solve a social issue, should the whole of society just disgrace itself?" said another netizen.

Columnist Hou Hongbin said that if polyandry were a viable form of marriage, it should be ubiquitous and not just confined to rural areas, pointing out the economic injustice at the heart of the arrangement. "If polyandry was an enjoyable form of relationship between a woman and a man, why do we not see corrupt Chinese officials sharing the same wife? Instead, they all have tons of mistresses," said Hou.

Social issues cannot be fully explained by economic patterns, wrote Dong Fan, a professor at Beijing Normal University. "This is a disputable article, and the point of argument is based on economic morality rather than economic principles," said Dong. The big deal would not be to marry off China's bachelor surplus through the suggested methods but rather the mediation, negotiation and conflict of values that would ensue, which is a social issue, not a problem of economics, he added.

Yang Jianhua, the dean of the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences, said that researchers need to be careful when using the methodology of their profession to analyze fields outside of their expertise, which often leads to implausible conclusions.

syed putra · Oct 26, 2015

lifeafter41 said:
It is easy for him (this professor) to say.
since he is married, maybe should ask him if he is willing to share his wife with 4 others.
And if he has a daughter, if he is willing to married off his daughter to 5 men, everyday, taking turns.........
And if he has a son, if he is willing to let his son share with 4 other men, his son's wife and then do not know who, who the bastard son/daughter belongs to, apart from taking a paternity test to determine.

Short of asking women to become a sex slave........ss what he is suggesting.

Must ask wife and daughter if they are willing.
I think its. Brilliant idea. Bhutan already practice this. Wife/daughter eventually gets inheritance not husband or son. Wife fed up with one husband can go sleep with another or both together.a threesome of foursome depending on number of husband. Wife will never get bored.

Patriot · Oct 27, 2015

It was normal for women in 18th- and 19th-century China to have two husbands]

Waiting for the right third? (John Thompson, Wellcome Library, London, licensed under CC BY 4.0)

[h=5]SHARE[/h]
[h=5]WRITTEN BY[/h]Gwynn Guilford
[h=5]OBSESSION[/h]China's Transition
October 13, 2015

China is a bachelor nation, with some 33 million more men than it has women to marry them. The glut of “bare branches,” as these arithmetically unmarriageable men are called, will only begin ebbing between 2030 and 2050.

Though the term “bare branches” might sound like modern slang, it actually dates back centuries. That’s no coincidence—from 1700 well into the 1900s, China experienced a similar guy glut.

That’s right: in 18th and 19th century rural China, women took two (or sometimes more) husbands. This happened in every province in China, and for the most part, their communities tolerated or even accepted it.

The little-known prevalence of polyandry comes to light in Matthew Sommer’s fascinating history of peasant family structures, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China. Since most peasants were illiterate and the Qing elite regarded polyandry as supremely immoral, there are few traces of the practice. Sommer, a Stanford University historian, draws descriptions from court cases.

Take, for example, the story of a farmer named Zheng Guoshun and his wife, Jiang Shi, in the southern province of Fujian in the mid-1700s. When Zheng suddenly went blind, his wife recruited a younger man named Jiang Yilang (no relation) to move in with the couple and help out on the farm, in exchange for sex. For nearly three decades, relations among the trio seemed to have gone smoothly, and Jiang Shi bore two daughters. When Zheng died of natural causes, 28 years after the arrangement began, Jiang Shi and Jiang Yilang continued their relationship.

Though the Zheng-Jiang-Jiang union did happen to be the longest-term polyandrous relationship Sommer found, the story is hardly unusual. Some polyandrous relationships combusted after a few months (often ending in a crime that landed them in the legal record). But many endured for years or even decades.

Xiamen, 1871.(John Thompson, Wellcome Library, London, licensed under CC BY 4.0)So why take two husbands? Contrary to modern-day associations with polyamory, the purpose was to protect the family.

Given how hard it was for peasants to survive, this was no easy feat to pull off. Between 1700 and 1850, the Middle Kingdom’s population tripled in size. Cultivated farmland, however, only doubled—encouraging people to simply work the land even harder. That left more people depending on less productive land for food. Mass famine was common.

Meanwhile, thanks to female infanticide and the Chinese elite’s concubine habit, among other things, the Middle Kingdom was amidst a “marriage crunch,” as demographic historian Ted Telford put it. The scarcity of demand meant rural men had to pay a heavy bride price—steeper than most could afford. The value of women’s sexual attention, companionship, and child-bearing capacity rose too.

When disaster struck—be it flooding or crop failure, or the personal calamity of injury or illness—two-worker families often earned too little to eat. Some families opted to sell of their children or allow a wealthier man buy the wife.

Instead of having to hock her kid or put the wife on the market, a family could find a second husband to bring in extra income and let families pool resources more efficiently. The primary couple gained economic security from this arrangement, while second husbands got a family and, often, the chance for offspring to care for them in their old age.

Many of these relationships were formalized according to local marriage custom. Some signed a contract, even though it was inadmissible in the Qing court. The two husbands commonly swore an oath of brotherhood (possibly in a bid to protect the first husband’s ego).

A Fujian woman in 1871.(John Thompson, Wellcome Library, London, licensed under CC BY 4.0)Exactly how common was the practice? It’s impossible to know. Since the Qing elite condemned the practice—while at the same time celebrating polygyny—many polyandrous families weren’t always open about the “uncle” living in the spare bedroom. Sommer notes that for every case recorded in the legal records of the time, there “must have been a great many others that left no specific written record.”

Not all of these unions ended well—in fact, many were recorded at all because one spouse wound up murdering another. But there’s a bias here: the literate people in the Qing only recorded their own, very different lives. So it’s impossible to know how stable the relationships were that didn’t end in tragedy, followed by a Qing courtroom. Despite this somewhat sordid skew, what comes through Sommer’s record of polyandry is how resilient these unorthodox families were.

Of course, this example will be of little help to today’s “bare branches.” In pretty much all modern states, polygamy of either sort is deemed threatening to marriage. Polyandry’s prevalence in Qing China, however, suggests that sometimes the way to strengthen a marriage is to make it a little bit bigger.

Professor has solution for China’s millions of bachelors

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