Two-Husband Policy Suggested By Chinese Professor

[GreyhoundFan]

So the "one child" policy has had serious ramifications (duh) and there are 30 million Chinese men who won't be able to have a wife. So an economics professor suggests a solution. He obviously has little regard for women. "Two-husband strategy may be a remedy for China’s one-child policy, professor posits"

Spoiler

Chinese authorities have been trying for three years to reverse the devastating imbalances of their one-child policy and coax couples to have more children.

They’ve told couples that it’s their patriotic duty to have two babies. 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. China’s birthrate remains stubbornly low and men greatly outnumber women, creating a demographic crisis that could hinder economic growth for decades to come.

But now, an economics professor at Fudan University in Shanghai has come up with another — and, unsurprisingly, controversial — solution: Allow women to have multiple husbands, and they will have multiple babies.

“I wouldn’t suggest polyandry if the gender ratio was not so severely imbalanced,” Yew-Kwang Ng, who is Malaysian, wrote in his regular column on a Chinese business website this month. The headline asked: “Is polyandry really a ridiculous idea?”

“I’m not advocating for polyandry, I’m just suggesting that we should consider the option in the face of an imbalanced gender ratio,” he continued.

For 36 years, China’s ruling Communist Party stipulated that couples could have only one child except in special circumstances, such as if they lived in a rural area and their first child was a girl or a boy with disabilities. It was part of a strategy to boost China’s growth rate and its living standards at the same time.

The policy worked too well. In China today, home to 1.4 billion people, there are 100 million people under the age of 40 who are an only child. But the traditional preference for sons — and the associated practice of aborting daughters — means that there are about 34 million more men than women.

That in itself is a big problem. But add into the mix a tendency among millennial women to delay marriage and having even one baby — or none at all — and it’s a demographic time bomb.

China’s population is forecast to peak at 1.45 billion as soon as 2027, then start a long decline. About one-third of the population will be over the age of 65 by 2050.

In 2015, the Communist Party started unwinding the one-child policy, but it has had almost no impact. Women increasingly want careers of their own, and many would rather channel their energy into giving one child a good start in life than split their resources between two.

Enter Professor Ng.

His suggestion to solve the oversupply of men is to allow involuntary bachelors — known as “bare branches” in Chinese because they cannot bear fruit for their family tree — to share the relatively scarce 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?” Ng asked, citing polygamy as a common custom in ancient times and a continuing practice in some strains of Islam.

“I’m not denying the advantages of monogamy here, such as how exclusive long-term relationships can benefit kids’ growth and education,” Ng wrote in his column, according to the website SupChina, which first reported in English about the controversial remarks. “But given China’s skewed sex ratio, it’s necessary to consider allowing polyandry legally.”

Plus, it would just be more efficient, he continued, suggesting that women would have no trouble meeting the physical needs of multiple husbands.

“It’s common for prostitutes to serve more than 10 clients in a day,” Ng wrote, before taking off on another offensive tangent. “Making meals for three husbands won’t take much more time than for two husbands,” he added.

Ng’s column went viral on the Chinese Internet. And many women on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, were unimpressed.

“It made me throw up,” wrote a woman calling herself Keely, asking why Ng didn’t put himself in the woman’s shoes.

“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.

Ng is steeling for a fight. He wrote that his next column aimed at redressing gender imbalances would be about legalizing brothels.

Because China’s gender mismatch has caused a fierce competition among men looking for wives, he said, “a man’s right to achieving sexual satisfaction is being severely violated if legal sex work is not allowed.”

Legalizing sex work and building more brothels would allow men to attend to their “urgent needs,” he wrote.

Stand by for more outrage on Weibo, and beyond.

He talks about men's "urgent needs". Well, I have an urgent need for him to come here so I can kick him in the family jewels so hard that he wouldn't be able to worry about his "urgent needs" ever again.

[JermajestyDuggar]

Let’s just look at WHY people wanted boys over girls for so long. Sexism. And now that women in China have more say in their lives must piss those men off even more. Sexism created this problem and sexism won’t get them out of it.

Edited June 12, 2020 by JermajestyDuggar

[PennySycamore]

As it turns out, polyandry was traditionally practiced in Tibet which should be truly autonomous if not independent. Two brothers would marry one woman. It was a way to keep family farms from being split up into plots too small to sustain a family.  It don't know that was ever really widespread though.  

[JermajestyDuggar]

I’m surprised more single Chinese men don’t look into surrogacy if they want a child so bad. Especially if their parents are still alive and healthy. Then the grandparents could help out with the childcare since the man isn’t married. 

[Emma]

“A man’s right to sexual satisfaction”? Since when do men have the RIGHT to sexual satisfaction??

Edited June 12, 2020 by Emma

[indianabones]

46 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I’m surprised more single Chinese men don’t look into surrogacy if they want a child so bad. Especially if their parents are still alive and healthy. Then the grandparents could help out with the childcare since the man isn’t married. 

I read that it's becoming a lot more common for gay men in China to hire surrogates from the US. That way, their family has an heir and their parents get off their backs about finding a wife.

[Ozlsn]

There are reports from the provinces close to North Korea of escaping north Korean women being essentially trafficked into sex slavery in villages specifically to ensure all branches of the family continue. The women are of course unable to go to the police (who are looking the other way already) for fear of being returned to North Korea. It's horrible.

[anjulibai]

Gross. Go fuck yourself dude, no woman should. 

[Alisamer]

On 6/12/2020 at 5:23 PM, Emma said:

“A man’s right to sexual satisfaction”? Since when do men have the RIGHT to sexual satisfaction??

Exactly. Buy some toys and get over yourself.

(I have no problem whatsoever with people marrying more than one person - assuming everyone involved is 100% consenting of the arrangement. Unfortunately that's rarely the case in practice. And any guy who wants a wife for the sole purpose of sex? Doesn't deserve the time of day.)

[Howl]

On 6/13/2020 at 7:18 PM, Ozlsn said:

There are reports from the provinces close to North Korea of escaping north Korean women being essentially trafficked into sex slavery in villages specifically to ensure all branches of the family continue. The women are of course unable to go to the police (who are looking the other way already) for fear of being returned to North Korea. It's horrible.

And it's not just women from North Korea.  It's sad and tragic on so many levels.