There’s been quite a bit written recently about social instability contributed to by young men not having access to women, due to polygyny and social mores. Frustrated young men are thought to be more susceptible to the lure of having 72 virgins in paradise than a married man with a family. Access to virgins in paradise is a recruiting tool used by jihadist groups.

What will become of the tens of millions of Chinese men who will not be able to have wives due to the absence of Chinese women. Will there be polyandry or prison-style homosexuality? Brothels on a massive scale?

Sounds like a disaster from both ends…families wanting their children to marry-up: and perceving that the only way to do so is to marry them to foreigners. What does that say about the relative health and self-confidence of the local society ?

Then there are the local young men, who have their own opinions about the course of their societies, and the causes for it, who are now being priced out of the marriage market.

Does not sound at all like a recipe for stability

My gungfu sifu’s wife did a thesis on the similarities and differences between women aged 25-35 in Hong Kong and Japan. In her research, she discovered that a substantial number of Japanese women travel to Hong Kong with the aim of finding a Hong Kong husband, as Hong Kong men are considered bastions of enlightenment compared to their Japanese male peers. From the Hong Kong male perspective, a Japanese woman is pretty subordinate compared to the typical pouting Cantonese princess, so the deal works well both ways. Probably largely a middle class/upper middle class phenomenon.

TFF: while that may occur, it is not common enough to be reflected in the statistics, and nothing compared to the number of older Japanese men marrying younger Chinese and Southeast Asian women. Check out the statistics, recently covered at this blog here.

Lirelou: A visa is a real issue, but one option would be a fiance visa, which, once approved, gives you 90 days in the US to perform the marriage.

Regarding the racial aspect. In much of East Asia, culture and language is what identifies a person’s “nationality”, though modern nationalism has introduced some anti-”foreigner” elements. China, as an empire, was composed of various peoples who all identified themselves as “Chinese”. Likewise, Vietnam had enough Chinese immigration into the North and South to produce no small number of families with a Chinese ancestor. Those descendants of Chinese who became Vietnamese experienced no problems. Those who ran into problems after the Communist victory were families who had maintained their Chinese identities and had generally intermarried only within other Chinese families. Taiwan, with its present emphasis upon its multi-cultural past, should likewise be able to absorb a fair number of foreign wives bringing different tastes into their culture and cuisine. In all of these countries, a common confucian past and outlook make accomodation far easier than it otherwise might be. As for Korea and Japan, the two most “racially homogenous” coutries in East Asia, and the two whose languages differ the most from Mandarin, there are historical and cultural precedents of “foreign” Asians blending into their societies. Korea has one branch of the Li family that traces its origin back to a Le refugee who had fled Vietnam in the Mongol period, a distant Queen was from India, and Japanese history teaches that some of their islands were peopled by Malay-Polynesians before what became Japan emerged. In short, excepting Korean ultranationalists, most east Asians judge others to be whatever nationality they claim based upon culture and language. The idea that one is a “mongrel”, or “Heinz 57”, appears to be alien to East Asia. Assuming that the children of these foreign wives are raised to identify the dominant culture as their own, they should experience no difficulties in being accepted for what they are.

Just relaying what was told to me. The statistics on the CS Monitor link don’t support her proposition.