As Chinese authorities attempt to reverse the disastrous imbalances of their infamous one-child policy, one professor has put forth a daring suggestion to solve the oversupply of men:
Polyandry, a mating system in which a female may have multiple partners.
Though as one might have surmised…
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His remark was not taken well.
Professor Suggests Two-Husband Strategy in China As There Are Too Many Men in the Country
For 36 years, China’s ruling Communist Party decreed that couples are allowed to have only one child except in special circumstances (if they lived in a rural area, and their child was either a girl or a disabled boy).
It was a strategy to stunt the overgrowing population in the country, and boost China’s living standards at the same time.
But it has, as my Aunt Matilda would put it, worked too bloody well. At present, China boasts 1.4 billion people:
With a rough 34 million more men than women.
This is in part due to a traditional preference for sons, and the associated practice of aborting girls.
And with more and more millennial women wanting careers of their own, and thus delaying marriage and childbirth, things are complicated even further.
Since 2015, China has been working to undo the lopsided effects of its one-child policy.
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Nothing seemed to work.
“They’ve told couples that it’s their patriotic duty to have two babies,” wrote Anna Fifield of The Washington Post. “They’ve dangled tax breaks and housing subsidies. They’ve offered to make education cheaper and parental leave longer. They’ve tried to make it more difficult to get an abortion or a divorce.
“None of this has worked.”
The future, as a result, seems bleak.
China’s population is expected to peak at 1.45 billion as soon as 2027, then take a long, persistent decline. By 2050, around one-third of the population will be over the age of 65.
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The situation, as you can tell, is dire at best.
And perhaps that’s why an economics professor at Fudan University in Shanghai has come up with another method. A really controversial method, I should mention:
Permit women to have multiple husbands, to have more children.
Polyandry
In a bid to solve the oversupply of men, Professor Yew-Kwang Ng has proposed that China adopt polyandry to allow involuntary bachelors (single males who can’t bear fruit for their family tree) to share the relatively sparse supply of women.
“If two men are willing to marry the same wife and the woman is willing too, what reason does society have to stop them sharing a wife?” he asked, citing Polygamy, a mating system in which a one can have more than one partner, as a common practice in ancient times and a continuing one in some veins of Islam.
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“I’m not denying the advantages of monogamy here, such as how exclusive long-term relationships can benefit kids’ growth and education.
“But given China’s skewed sex ratio, it’s necessary to consider allowing polyandry legally.”
He also suggested that it would be a more efficient process and that women have no real ‘trouble’ attending to the needs of multiple husbands.
“It’s common for prostitutes to serve more than 10 clients in a day,” Ng wrote. “Making meals for three husbands won’t take much more time than for two husbands,” he added.
Responses Were Not Positive
After Ng’s column went viral on the Chinese Internet, many women on Weibo conveyed their dissonance at his remarks.
“It made me throw up,” wrote a woman calling herself Keely. She also asked why Ng wasn’t empathising with a woman’s point of view.
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“I’m shocked by what he says. Is it 2020 now?” asked Fuduoduo.
“Let me translate what he means: he wants to legalize sex slaves,” said another.
Notwithstanding the backlash, it seems that Ng remains intent on treading the controversial route. According to the same source, Ng wrote that his next column, targeted at the disproportionate gender balances in China, would be about legalising brothels.
As China’s gender mismatch has resulted in ‘fierce’ competition among men looking for partners, “a man’s right to achieving sexual satisfaction is being severely violated if legal sex work is not allowed.”
By legalising sex work and establishing more brothels, men would be allowed to attend to their “urgent needs”, he wrote.
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Well, from the looks of it…
I fully expect to see another Goody Feed article on Professor Ng’s sentiments sometime in the near future.
What about you? What do you think of Professor Ng’s proposal? Is it too far-fetched in these times, or is it actually plausible in light of China’s ‘plight’?
Tell us in the comments section below!
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