One of the advantages of a long life with a healthy brain is the possibility to compare the predictions of the past with current reality, that is, to learn the outcome of former actions. Chinese one child policy a generation ago led to an unbalanced demographic pyramid today, with some fifty million young men that cannot find brides. This outcome was noticed and predicted some thirty years ago and caused Western pundits to write long articles about its consequences.
Now we can see that they were all wrong. Some predicted that these young men would be tremendously angry and riot on the streets, creating social chaos during many years. Others predicted that the Communist government would be forced to occupy these young males in foreign wars, that would decimate this unmanageable population. Others predicted widespread homosexuality, like the Arab societies; other yet the government would establish accessible whorehouses for the people. All the Western observers predicted social dislocation and violence.
Nothing of that happened. Chinese men bear their solitude, and try to improve themselves to attract brides. They study like crazy, they run after the yuan, they pay to suddenly created marriage gurus. the pic, from Der Spiegel, shows one of these gurus, surrounded by single men who are his students, Cheng Ming, 26, (center) a teacher at a dating school in Hangzhou, China, demonstrates how to moisturize and apply foundation to one's face before heading out for a date. The Chinese are reacting in a radically different way than imagined by Western think tanks, the RAND and the CIA, and of course the eternal legion of ignorant/stupid journalists.
Now we can see that they were all wrong. Some predicted that these young men would be tremendously angry and riot on the streets, creating social chaos during many years. Others predicted that the Communist government would be forced to occupy these young males in foreign wars, that would decimate this unmanageable population. Others predicted widespread homosexuality, like the Arab societies; other yet the government would establish accessible whorehouses for the people. All the Western observers predicted social dislocation and violence.
Nothing of that happened. Chinese men bear their solitude, and try to improve themselves to attract brides. They study like crazy, they run after the yuan, they pay to suddenly created marriage gurus. the pic, from Der Spiegel, shows one of these gurus, surrounded by single men who are his students, Cheng Ming, 26, (center) a teacher at a dating school in Hangzhou, China, demonstrates how to moisturize and apply foundation to one's face before heading out for a date. The Chinese are reacting in a radically different way than imagined by Western think tanks, the RAND and the CIA, and of course the eternal legion of ignorant/stupid journalists.
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