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Why Women Can't Find Men in China (Yes You Read That Right)
In this episode, Malcolm and Simone dive deep into the surprising marriage trends in China, exploring why so many men are opting out of marriage despite a surplus of single women. From cultural expectations to economic pressures and social shifts, we break down the data, stories, and theories behind this demographic puzzle.
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Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing marriage in China, which has a very interesting phenomenon in which women, now everybody knows for a long time. You know, the China, because of the one child policy. People didn't want girls because they couldn't carry, carry on the family name.
They couldn't, you know, take care of you as easily when they're older, et cetera. And so they would find ways to have boys which meant there was a huge extra amount of boys in China.
Simone Collins: Right, right.
Malcolm Collins: So you would think the demographic that is having trouble finding a partner is boys. Right. That would be my assumption.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: So I'll go over how bad things actually are in the opposite direction. We will then get into the common explanations people have, why I don't think they're good, and what a good explanation is.
Simone Collins: Ooh. So
Malcolm Collins: at an event in 2025, this was a Shanghai matchmaking event, [00:01:00] a mass matchmaking of it in Shanghai had nearly 1000 women who paid a 601 entry fee to attend, but fewer than 50 men showed up. Ouch. 600 women to 50 men organizing. It just seems like a
Simone Collins: bad marketing thing though, don't you think? No,
Malcolm Collins: No, because you'll see that this happens a lot. Organizers noted that when a single man did appear, he was swarmed like a minor celebrity with women rushing to compete for his attention.
In some cities, similar events have reported zero male attendees, despite hundreds of women waiting. Gosh,
Speaker: In Shanghai, there are plenty of unmarried women coming to my matchmaking events, but hardly any unmarried men nowadays, it seems that for every one Shanghai men, there are several or even over a dozen women competing, and the women are really desperate. It's not that they don't want a partner. If there are no men, how can they find one?
So now whenever one man shows up, everyone rushes for him. This has been going on for a long time. A few months [00:02:00] ago, Shanghai held a rather special matchmaking event with an interesting rule. Every woman had to pay 600 UN while men could attend for free, the women expected a flood of male participants, but to everyone's surprise, nearly a thousand women showed up while fewer than 50 men participated.
Malcolm Collins: the Gong Zg singles fair in 2024, a government sponsored single fair in Gozo had over 8,000 women registered, but only 40 men attend, resulting to a 20 to one female to male ratio.
Simone Collins: What is going on, especially considering the population
Malcolm Collins: skew?
Yeah, the, the, the 20 to 25 assault women lining up. To meet the few men present was organizers noting that the men were quote unquote overwhelmed and left due to
Published on 3 months, 1 week ago