Please, give me a break. A scientist from London (of all places!) lecturing China about future male youth delinquency? Last time I checked there was enough actual crime to worry about right in front of Mrs. Hesketh' Ivory Tower.
Let me go Tom Friedman style here and launch a prediction:
The 100 Chinese girls will push through all of their goals with strict heavy-handed determination, whereas the 118-138 boys are going to die of dehydration.
How dare I make such a prediction? Well, what I saw in China was:
Girls: either in the library, up to their eyeballs in work. Or tarted up like Academy Award nominees out on the streets, arm in arm with high-achievers (native or laowai regardless).
Boys: deep down in a hole underground (aka "Internet Cafe"), ego-shooting Marines - 1 GI down, zillions more to kill.
Oh, I'm not saying that all those boys will turn into little monsters. It's also really unfair for people to assume that "bachelors = delinquents," because that's just not true.
The predictable demographic nightmare is the huge gender gap in the overall population. (What did people think was going to happen?) What will that do to society over time? We've already seen the "little emperor" syndrome. What about family life in future?
Then again, this all gives the xiao-jie population a lot more choice in the dating market? ;-)
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Please, give me a break. A scientist from London (of all places!) lecturing China about future male youth delinquency? Last time I checked there was enough actual crime to worry about right in front of Mrs. Hesketh' Ivory Tower.
Let me go Tom Friedman style here and launch a prediction:
The 100 Chinese girls will push through all of their goals with strict heavy-handed determination, whereas the 118-138 boys are going to die of dehydration.
How dare I make such a prediction? Well, what I saw in China was:
Girls: either in the library, up to their eyeballs in work. Or tarted up like Academy Award nominees out on the streets, arm in arm with high-achievers (native or laowai regardless).
Boys: deep down in a hole underground (aka "Internet Cafe"), ego-shooting Marines - 1 GI down, zillions more to kill.
Oh, I'm not saying that all those boys will turn into little monsters. It's also really unfair for people to assume that "bachelors = delinquents," because that's just not true.
The predictable demographic nightmare is the huge gender gap in the overall population. (What did people think was going to happen?) What will that do to society over time? We've already seen the "little emperor" syndrome. What about family life in future?
Then again, this all gives the xiao-jie population a lot more choice in the dating market? ;-)
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