Scam shows China’s shortage of brides reaching critical mass

[Arcadiasix]

NEW YORK – In the villages outside Handan, China, a bachelor looking to marry a local girl needs to have as much as $64,000, the price tag for a suitable home and obligatory gifts. That is a bit out of the price range of many of the farmers in the area.

So, in recent years, according to the Beijing News, local men turned to a Vietnamese marriage broker, paying as much as $18,500 for an imported wife, complete with a money-back guarantee in case the bride fled.

But that fairy tale soon fell apart. On the morning of Nov. 21, sometime after breakfast as many as 100 of Handan’s imported Vietnamese wives, together with the broker, disappeared without a trace.

It was a peculiarly Chinese instance of fraud. The victims are a local subset of a fast-growing underclass: millions of poor, mostly rural men who cannot meet familial and social expectations that they marry and start a family because of the country’s skewed demographics. In January, the director of the National Bureau of Statistics announced that China is home to 33.8 million more men than women out of a population exceeding 1.3 billion.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/26/asia-pacific/social-issues-asia-pacific/chinas-bride-shortage-crisis-getting-much-worse/#.VQQoxeG3z6M

[Arcadiasix]

1. Aborting female fetuses leads to a shortage of wives...

No Shit Sherlock!!!!

[zazen]

2. the women-hating comments on that article are terrifying--MRAs gravitate to Asian female stories

I've noticed when there's any article about marriages in Eastern Europe or Asia a group of entitled, female-hating MRAs pile on about how wonderful and obedient the Asian women are and how monstrous our "feminists" are. The comments on this story are really scary.

Thanks for the article.

Interesting in their culture(s) that males are expected to take care of parents, since that role more typically devolves upon females in North America. I thought China had a social safety net for the elderly but I guess it's more of a cultural expectation.

It's also disgusting that the disproportion of males to females isn't improving women's opportunity to leverage for more rights or money. Rather, pimps, traffickers, and fathers are stepping in to get higher "bride" prices. F**kers.

[distantearlywarning]

3. Bummer.

I guess that's what happens when you abort female babies for a generation. Who knew?