Why This Professor Says Low-Income Chinese Men Should Share Wives

October 22, 2015

A Chinese economics professor is advocating that China’s future unmarried men share wives.

According to South China Morning Post, Xie Zuoshi, an economics professor at the Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, said that sharing wives was the most logical solution to the nation’s uneven sex ratio.

“I am not joking. Any reasonable person applying critical thinking will come to the same conclusion. We can not deprive those men of wives just to be moral,” Xie said.

China is facing an upcoming “Bachelor Crisis” that will see the nation’s men outnumber their female counterparts by 33.8 million, according to projections from China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported by the Hong Kong Free Press.

The imbalance is mainly due to China’s one-child policy and cultural preference for boys, which has led to a high prevalence of sex-selective abortions. The result has been 24 to 34 million more boys than girls being born in the past three decades.

“It is a reality that we have so many more men than women.” Xie said. “Serious social problems, such as rape and assaults, will happen if men cannot find wives. But it doesn’t have to be like that if they are given choices.”

Citing the law of supply and demand, Xie, who is 50 and married, said more bachelors means women would be in higher demand and thus rise in value. Men with high incomes would select wives first and low-income men could share wives.

Xie also suggested that the country abandon laws that called for monogamy in marriages while also opening up the institution to gays.

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