Some 30 million Chinese men may be forced to remain bachelor by 2020 due to growing gender imbalance in the world’s most populous nation, a government report has cautioned. For every 100 baby girls born in 2005, there were 118.58 baby boys, and the gap will continue to widen, a report by the State Population and Family Planning Commission said.
In southern Chinese provinces such as Guangdong and Hainan, the picture is grimmer: There are 130 baby boys for every 100 baby girls. Since 2005, the number of men reaching marriage age in China has been much more than women.
“The increasing difficulties men face finding wives may lead to social instability,” said the report by more than 300 Chinese demographers after two years’ research.
This is because Chinese traditionally prefer boys, and with their financial status improved, those in the booming coastal areas can afford to find out the sex of the foetus. The picture will be starker in the countryside than in cities, said the report. To solve the problem, there must be a full-fledged social security system so that rural residents don’t have to depend on their sons when they get old, a researcher at the Institute of Population and Labour Economics affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Wang Guangzhou said.
According to the report, China’s population will increase by 200 million in 30 years, which means the total population will hit 1.36 billion by 2010 and 1.45 billion by 2020 before peaking at 1.5 billion in 2033.