30 million single men may never find a bride

Nation still has the world's highest ratio of male to female newborns

As young lovers worldwide mark Valentine's Day on Tuesday, millions of Chinese men face the prospect of spending life without a wife, according to a population expert.

Yuan Xin, a professor at Nankai University in Tianjin, said his calculations based on the government's birth data indicate that 30.5 million more males than females were born in China between 1980 and 2015.

With the nation's gender imbalance expected to continue, he predicted that these men are destined to forever remain bachelors.

"The number of 'surplus men', those left single due to a lack of partners, will be much higher than 30 million due to the skewed sex ratio and the fact many Chinese women are choosing not to get married," Yuan said.

Zhai Zhenwu, head of the China Population Association, echoed his comments in a People's Daily article on Monday. He said more male babies have been born every year since the mid-1980s, largely due to the preference for sons, adding that adult men will outnumber adult women by 30 million by 2050.

Despite a decline in recent years, China's sex ratio at birth (the number of males born for every 100 females) still stood at 113.5 in 2015, the highest in the world, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. The normal range is 103 to 107.

The ratio is expected to reach 107 in China by 2030 due to the implementation of the second-child policy as well as social and economic development, according to the State Council's outline on population development.

However, Yuan said there is no simple solution for the 30 million surplus men.

One measure could be finding a bride in a neighboring country, such as Vietnam or Ukraine, the professor said. "It may help some of them, but it will not solve the problem for everyone, as 30 million is a big number - equivalent to the population of a medium-sized country."

Contact the writers at wangxiaodong@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 02/14/2017 page5)