The Ghost of China’s One-Child Policy
The ghost of China’s one-child policy continues to cast a long and ominous shadow, its most stark manifestation being a staggering gender imbalance. Decades of selective abortions have created a profound demographic chasm, leaving a surplus of nearly 35 million men, and they will all have reached maturity by 2030. The crucial point is that this isn’t a problem that will simply fade with time…
The Rising Tide of Unmet Needs: A Challenge as Men Mature
The crucial point is the societal impact as this cohort of men fully enters adulthood. Human beings are hardwired for connection, yet these men will face lifelong exclusion from marriage and family structures.
The Potential Link Between Frustrated Maturity and Social Instability
The blunt truth, often whispered but rarely amplified, is that a large cohort of frustrated, unmarried men reaching maturity can be a significant destabilizing force. Sorry for this uncomfortable truth, but it’s mostly young men that are behind violent crime…
China’s Policy Conundrum: Addressing a Maturing Imbalance
Faced with this intensifying demographic challenge as millions of “surplus” men reach maturity, the Communist Party may be compelled to explore unconventional policy shifts. A softening stance on homosexuality in China might make for a 10% adjustment. We can also expect more women being “imported” from North Korea and Siberia, a practice fraught with ethical concerns and unlikely to significantly alter the demographic imbalance given the sheer numbers involved.
Chinese Mercenaries on the Global Stage
Mercenaries are on the rise everywhere. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia contracted Sudanese fighters to bolster its coalition, capitalizing on Sudan’s economic collapse to recruit battle-hardened but impoverished men.
Similarly, the Russian Wagner Group has drawn fighters from across Africa and Syria, offering wages far beyond what they could earn at home.
Russia is already “importing” 4000 North Korean soldiers to fight in Ukraine (where they die, being sent to the front line not even knowing what they are fighting for)”.
In recent weeks we learnt that there are already 150 Chinese men fighting in Ukraine. So far they are seemingly “poor idiots, coming after the money, lured by TikTok adverts”. They then tend to regret their choice, as Russians treat them inhumanely and send them to the frontline.
While Beijing currently insists on “no official link to china so far,” the possibility of these individuals being “a first set of voluntary mercenaries testing the waters, before a 30 Million Chinese Wagner will emerge.
If China’s “surplus men” become a strategic “commodity”, we could see the rise of a “30-million-man mercenary army”—a destabilizing force rented out to the highest bidder, with the Chinese government profiting while maintaining plausible deniability.
Brace Brace: The Geopolitical Ramifications of China’s Demographic Crisis
The demographic deficit in China isn’t merely a statistical anomaly; it’s a lonely army with potentially far-reaching geopolitical instability.
