China's Single, Successful 'Leftover Women' Pressured to Marry As Concubines & Sex Trafficking Skyrocket
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China’s ‘Leftover Women’ Are Screwing Up the Country
My Facebook friend Shanshan Thompson sent me this New York Times China op-ed last night. Titled ‘China’s ‘Leftover Women’ , the author addresses the pressures being put on women in China to marry and have a child.
Note, that there is considerable pressure on the Chinese government to end its one-child policy and adopt a two-child one. Census data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that in 2011, China’s gender ratio stood at 117.78 newborn boys for every 100 baby girls, a continuous decline from 119.45 in 2009 and 117.94 in 2010. While positive, the results of the one-child policy have created significant problems. It’s estimated that by 2020, there will be 24 million more men than women at marriage age in China.
The institution charged with being a primary source of pressure on women’s choices and promoter of insecurity in women is the All-China Women’s Federation, founded by the Communist Parti in 1949 to “protect women’s rights and interests.”
Headlines on the ‘feminist’ website include:
* “Overcoming the Big Four Emotional Blocks: Leftover Women Can Break out of Being Single.”
* “Eight Simple Moves to Escape the Leftover Women Trap.”
* “Do Leftover Women Really Reserve Our Sympathy?”
I will share more advice to Chinese women by their government at the end of photographer Stockton Johnson’s beautiful editorial ‘Romantic Pastel’, starring Tian Yi for Vogue China January 2013.Yi Guo has styled a gorgeous tableau of spring romanticism to feed the aspirations of China’s growing class of professional women.
America is clearly not the only nation with one political party seizing control of women’s bodies in an effort to force women to deal with our own challenging birth rate, previously held in balance by immigrant women who are now having fewer children.
Writing continues after editorial images.
French Roast News
Anne is reading …
China’s ‘Leftover’ Women cont.
China’s official feminist organization the Women’s Federation ran this editorial in March 2011 to honor International Women’s Day:
Many highly educated “leftover women” are very progressive in their thinking and enjoy going to nightclubs to search for a one-night stand, or they become the mistress of a high official or rich man. It is only when they have lost their youth and are kicked out by the man, that they decide to look for a life partner. Therefore, most “leftover women” do not deserve our sympathy.
Op-ed writer Leta Hong Fincher, an American doctoral student in Tsinghua University’s Department of Sociology researched the evolution of the term ‘leftover women’, concluded that the term evolved shortly after China’s State Council issued an edict on strengthening the Population and Family Program to address the nation’s “unprecedented population pressures.”
These pressures include the sex-ratio imbalance — which “causes a threat to social stability” — and the “low quality of the general population, which makes it hard to meet the requirements of fierce competition for national strength,” according to the State Council. The State Council names “upgrading population quality (suzhi)” as one of its key goals, and appoints the Women’s Federation as a primary implementer of its population planning policy.
The Women’s Federation argues that the primary reason that “high-quality” women aren’t interested in marrying and supporting the nation is “their standards for a partner are too high.” To address the “leftover women” crisis, the Local Women’s Federations have arranged matchmaking events. Last March there was a drive in Pinghu, Zhejiang Province for “leftover women to speedily find conjugal happiness.”
The Women’s Federation also advises women once married. In this example, we share advice on dealing with a Chinese husband having an affair:
When you find out that he is having an affair, you may be in a towering rage, but you must know that if you make a fuss, you are denying the man “face” … No man is capable of spending a lifetime being loyal to an outmoded wife who never changes … Try changing your hairstyle or your fashion. Women must constantly change for the better.
Now you know, dear readers, why it seemed fully plausible to weave this feminist op ed piece into Stockton Johnson’s beautiful editorial ‘Romantic Pastel’, starring Tian Yi for Vogue China January 2013.
AOC Looks At Chinese Women
Can Ken Make Shanghai Barbie Store A Global Wedding Destination? AOC World
I circled back to a tongue-in-cheek article I wrote in 2011 about Mattel’s struggle with success in their new Shanghai Barbie store.
It seems that at age 50, Barbie is reconsidering her single-girl status, at a time when 41% of eliglble Chinese women, average age 30, can’t find a man that pleases them. The study of 2 million respondents was conducted by the the China Association of Marriage and Family Studies (CAMF), the Committee of Match-making Service Industries under the China Association of Social Workers and the Baihe.com, a major Chinese match-making website.
Chinese women now account for half of all income in China, up from 20% in the 1950s.
Chinese Concubines Stage A Comeback
Chinese Concubines Back in Vogue AOC World
In modern China’s far more open society, concubines can be seen in the shopping malls and cafés of the cities, especially in the south, where there are thousands of what are known as “er nai” or “second breast”. By some estimates, more than 90 per cent of the country’s most senior officials punished on serious graft charges in the past five years have kept mistresses.
So serious has this problem become since I first wrote this short piece in August, 2009 that Foreign Policy Magazine this month features the title ‘The Mistress-Industrial Complex.
Li Chengyan, a professor at Peking University’s Research Center for Government Integrity,argues in all seriousness that the kept women can be recruited as whistleblowers against tomcatting Chinese officials. “The phenomenon of mistresses is so common in Chinese history, but the scale today is really unprecedented,” says Li, who thinks the problem is caused by loopholes in the discipline system and lack of effective supervision. “If we examine corrupt officials, about 80 to 90 percent of them also have mistresses.”
Progress & Problems
Film | Vogue China’s Angelica Cheung by Aurelie Saada AOC Style
Vogue China’s Editor-in-Chief Angelica Cheung made a short but elegant film, shot during the July couture shows.
Launched in September 2005, Vogue China has quickly become one of the biggest international editions of the magazine, with the first issue’s initial run of 300,000 copies selling out almost instantly, leading to a second printing. Subsequently, while many publications have thinned in line with the economy, Vogue China has consistently increased its page count in order to keep up with demand for advertising requests. “This woman has a real deepness to her, a real generosity that made the experience incredible,” says Saada of the Beijing-based Cheung.
Websites Sell Burmese Brides to Chinese Bachelors The Irrawaddy Magazine
Published yesterday is this article about Chinese farmers frustrated with not finding a wife turning to websites in Burma.
“Getting married to Chinese women is too expensive,” Yi Heliang, a Chinese farmer who bought a Burmese wife six years ago, told The Irrawaddy last week. “Burmese brides are cheap, so we [farmers] like to buy them.”
“Once the Burmese women become wives, they are forced to bear children for their husbands,” said Moon Nay Li, coordinator of the Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand (KWAT), which has spent years studying human trafficking in Burma’s northernmost Kachin State. She says that Chinese farmers pay up to $3,500 for a Burmese wife. At least 10 percent of those women are believed to be already married when they are abducted.
Also a grave problem for Burmese women is their purposeful travel to China in search of work. They are then abducted and married off to Chinese men against their will.
Just today the Chinese government put into effect a ban on women under 35 from Uganda entering the country. Apparently, the problem of younger Uganda women entering China involves an inordinately large number of the young women being sex slaves or victims of human trafficking.
