Based Camp - September 15, 2025Why Women Can't Find Men in China (Yes You Read That Right)
Episode Stats
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Summary
The number of marriages in China hit a record low of 6.1 million in 2015, and is on track to drop to 6.5 million by 2024. Why is this happening? Is it because women are having a hard time finding a partner, or is it because men are just not getting married anymore?
Transcript
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Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be discussing
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marriage in China, which has a very interesting phenomenon in which women, now everybody knows
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for a long time, you know, that China, because of the one child policy, people didn't want girls
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because they couldn't carry on the family name. They couldn't, you know, take care of you as
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easily when they're older, et cetera. And so they would find ways to have boys, which meant there
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was a huge extra amount of boys in China. Right. So you would think the demographic that is having
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trouble finding a partner is boys, right? That would be my assumption. Right. So I'll go over
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how bad things actually are in the opposite direction. We will then get into the common
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explanations people have, why I don't think they're good, and what a good explanation is.
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Ooh. So at an event in 2025, this was a Shanghai matchmaking event. A mass matchmaking event in
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Shanghai had nearly 1,000 women who paid a 601 entry fee to attend, but fewer than 50 men showed up.
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Ouch. 600 women to 50 men. This just seems like a bad marketing thing though, don't you think?
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No? No, because you'll see that this happens a lot. Organizers noted that when a single man did appear,
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he was swarmed like a minor celebrity, with women rushing to compete for his attention.
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In some cities, similar events have reported zero male attendees, despite hundreds of women waiting.
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Gosh. In Shanghai, there are plenty of unmarried women coming to my matchmaking events,
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but hardly any unmarried men. Nowadays, it seems that for every one Shanghai man,
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there are several, or even over a dozen, women competing. And the women are really desperate.
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It's not that they don't want a partner. If there are no men, how can they find one?
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So now, whenever one man shows up, everyone rushes for him. This has been going on for a long time.
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A few months ago, Shanghai held a rather special matchmaking event with an interesting rule.
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Every woman had to pay 600 yuan, while men could attend for free. The women expected a flood of male
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participants, but to everyone's surprise, nearly 1,000 women showed up, while fewer than 50 men participated.
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The Gongzong Singles Fair in 2024, a government-sponsored single fair in Gongzho,
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had over 800 women registered, but only 40 men attend, resulting to a 20 to 1 female to male ratio.
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What is going on, especially considering the population skew?
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The 20 to 25 saw women lining up to meet the few men present, with organizers noting that the men
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were quote-unquote overwhelmed, and left due to the intense attention.
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In the Changjoo blind date market, this was in 2023, in Changjoo, a park-based matchmaking
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event organized by parents saw a significant gender imbalance.
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Of the 158 profiles posted, 70% were for women.
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In Beijing's Valentine's Day event in 2024, a Valentine's Day matchmaking event in Beijing
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organized by a local marriage agency drew 600 women but 25 men, making it a 24 to 1 ratio.
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Now, here you might be saying, well, it's because men don't want to get married anymore in China.
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One poll done by the 2021 Communist Youth League survey found that 44% of Chinese women do not
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plan to marry, but only 25% of men plan to not marry.
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So actually, men want to get married at almost double the rate of women.
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And another poll showed that around 75 to 80% of urban women under 30, oh, this one showed
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women slightly higher, plan to get married compared to 60 to 70% of men.
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So in some polls, you see it, but it seems that it's either around the same or men dramatically
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And to give you an idea of how important this is, demographically speaking, because people
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don't realize how modern this phenomenon is and how quickly things are dropping.
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So in 2024, the number of registered marriages in China hit a record low since records began
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in 1980, falling to 6.1 million couples, a 20% drop from 2023.
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And it's already in 2024 at less than half the number of marriages that there were in
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And if we go sort of year by year to show how quickly this is dropping, between 2023
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Then by, what was it, H1, 2024, the first half, you had another 12.7% drop.
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Because I just figured everyone is thinking this too.
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Oh, well, because for men in China, it's too expensive to get married.
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So yeah, I can go and we'll read into some of the explanations.
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But the first thing that everyone always says is, well, in China, there's this huge stigma
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Or women who are, you know, women are supposed to get married young.
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And it's like, even if this stigma were true, okay, the high-valued men would secure, because
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like, sleeping around culture in China and stuff like that, like the problems we have
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in the US, this isn't really that common in China.
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To give you an idea of what I mean when I say it's rare for women in China to sleep around,
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one study showed that in China, for women ages 20 to 44, only 6.5% reported two or more
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Like, it's not common to just like date around and sleep around and, you know, the Chad
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So what would happen, right, if the problem was, is that men just had a preference for,
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you know, younger women, is the men who were able to secure the younger woman, like the
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women who are actually sane enough to secure their partner while they were still young,
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But then the other men, it's not like they disappear.
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For every woman not marrying, more than one man isn't marrying because there's more men
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than women in China due to the reasons we talked about before.
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So the men who were left over would still sort of trickle sort to these lower value older women
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And then people can be like, oh, well, it's that.
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And we'll talk about this because economics does play a role.
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There's like, there's a lot of economic expectations on men to get married in China,
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like having a house, paying the bride price, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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Except the problem isn't that women are being too snooty around these men, right?
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It's not if they're swarming them at these men.
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Yeah, it's that the men aren't showing up in the first place.
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Well, no, I mean, they're just not showing up to the dating events at least, right?
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If they were there, like even if they were a lower valued man,
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presumably they'd have an arbitrage opportunity.
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So into the surplus of men, they have about 30 to 35 million extra men of marrying age.
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Let's go over some wrong theories, but that I think are interesting and worth throwing out there and talking through.
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Chinese marriage follows strict hypergamy, marrying up in status, but it's asymmetric.
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Women are expected to marry up in income and education, while men avoid marrying down to women who out-earn or out-educate them.
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Urban women empowered by education and careers now demand partners who match or exceed their status,
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e.g. college-educated women want a man with a house, car, and stable job.
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But urban men often reject these quote-unquote strong women as unfeminine or threatening to traditional roles,
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A 2019 study, Journal of Comparative Economics, modeled this as equilibrium crowding out high-status women's pickiness,
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plus men's aversion to status, equals leads to 20 to 30% lower marriage rates for college grads versus less-educated women in surveys.
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70% of urban women said they prefer a wife earning less than them versus only 40% of women okay with earning less.
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Basically, what you're getting here is just pointing out that men prefer a woman who earns less than them, right?
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Yeah, which is also common in Western countries.
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In Western countries, and you're not seeing the same phenomenon as exaggerated in Western countries.
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And two, even if this was a phenomenon, it would be that the men were showing up to these events and then getting turned down.
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And when they are showing up, they're being swarmed.
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So that doesn't really make sense with this theory.
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Next, the skyrocketing economic barriers theory.
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Urban marriage requires men to front massive costs.
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With buy prices averaging around $14,000 to $28,000.
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And keep in mind what you earn per year in China.
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With urban property prices up 300% since 2010 and use and employment at 15% to 20%.
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Many men, especially non-elite ones, can't afford, with many women thinking you need a house in Chinese customs, to buy one and then be eligible.
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Women holding 40% of urban savings but often transferring it to in-laws upon marriage amplify this by demanding financial proof of stability.
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So when they get married, they send all their money to their family.
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So they're like, I need you to have financial stability.
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And it is true that marriage rates in China correlate inversely with housing costs where Beijing and Shanghai, only 50% of men under 30 own a property versus 80% needed for eligibility.
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But anyway, people are like, okay, so why show up if they're not even going to date you?
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But are the women really being that picky at the events?
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We'll get into this in just a second because the answer, a bit of a spoiler, it's yes, they are.
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Even though you get these scenes of men lining up, like women lining up to men, you don't know what they're asking them in those lines.
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And that's going to be the big reveal here, by the way.
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And then the final one is the migration theory, right?
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Rural areas have 20 to 30% more men due to women's outmigration for education slash jobs, while cities have a subtle female surplus among elites, with women being 55% of college grads in China.
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But a 5% difference doesn't explain the marriage rate thing that we're seeing here.
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Okay, so any thoughts before I go further, Simone?
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Because it's, I mean, those other things are definitely a factor.
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Also, they've been factors for a very long time.
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So what has changed is what is happening within these marriage marketplaces, right?
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It must be something that is happening in these environments that makes men not want to go, right?
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So let's look at what the men are saying about their experiences.
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So in one viral Weibo post, a man likened it to a cattle auction, where he said,
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the women asked about my salary, my house, and my car before they even asked my name.
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At a Shandong matchmaking event, where there is 4,000 singles reported in South China Morning Post,
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Wang John, a 27-year-old office worker, specified he wanted a partner without younger brothers.
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He explained to organizers that he feared marrying into a family where he'd be expected
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to support a male sibling financially, a common cultural expectation impactable in China.
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Can you imagine that, having to support your wife's younger brother?
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A lot of them are, which we'll talk about in a second, but not as much.
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Remember when we did our episode on, like, how the incels are stealing all the women from other countries?
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China is one of the countries where, if you look at migrants out of China,
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more of them are women than men, which likely means passport-broing is a large thing that's
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Finally, let's take a look at a high-quality unmarried man from Shanghai and why he still
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He's been on over 30 blind dates, and every single one has ended in failure.
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He's quite handsome. What kind of economic condition must he have for him to be unable
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A representative from the marriage agency explained,
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That's not the case at all. He's a local Shanghainese, born in 1992, employed in a state-owned
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enterprise, and earns over 300,000 yuan a year. He's about 1.75 meters tall, pretty average,
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Many girls actually liked him, but the man had his own ideas. He has 10 types of qualities he
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If you can meet my requirements, then I can seriously start a relationship with you with
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the aim of marriage. But if you don't, I'm sorry. Dating is fine, but marriage is out of the
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1. He doesn't want a girl who smokes, drinks, gambles, has tattoos, or wears heavy makeup.
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2. He doesn't want someone who dresses in a bizarre manner. For example, a girl who in
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broad daylight wanders around in cosplay. 3. He doesn't want someone who values pet rights
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over human rights. 4. He doesn't want someone who excessively posts beautified photos or selfies
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with heavy filters on social media. 5. He doesn't want someone who lives paycheck to paycheck.
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6. He doesn't want someone who is overly competitive or overly concerned with comparisons.
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7. He doesn't want a girl who goes clubbing, especially those wearing see-through outfits
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and still shaking it at bars 3 or 4 in the morning. 8. He doesn't want someone who lacks a sense of
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boundaries. For instance, being overly familiar with men who are already in relationships or having
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male best friends. 9. He doesn't want someone who is not filial to her parents. 10. He doesn't want
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someone who expects the man to do everything while contributing nothing herself. Netizens
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10. These 10 requirements are very normal. I thought they'd be something else.
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Believe it or not, when he presented these 10 requirements at the matchmaking corner,
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he ended up being surrounded by girls hurling insults at him. They called him an average guy
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with overblown confidence and told him to look in the mirror. I was really puzzled because it seemed
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like plenty of girls there actually met those 10 requirements.
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So, at a Shanghai matchmaking event, a 27-year-old male attendee, Cheng Wei, described the experience.
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He approached several women only to be asked immediately about his income, car ownership,
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and whether he had a Shanghai hokoi. I guess that means like home.
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One woman, a 29-year-old marketing manager, reportedly dismissed him after learning he rented
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rather than owned his apartment, saying, quote,
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Why are you here if you can't afford a home? End quote.
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Cheng felt humiliated and stopped attending these events. He said,
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These women act like they're shopping for a car, not a husband.
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A lot of this may actually come downstream of how few sexual partners Chinese women have.
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When you have only 6.5% of the population having slept with somebody else,
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you have a population that is extremely guarded in who they sleep with and how they date,
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And essentially what you're seeing here is what happens when you have what I think
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what a lot of Western men wish we had, which was overly guarded females about who they sleep with.
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When women become overly guarded and that becomes a norm within a culture,
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you get a cultural norm everywhere around being incredibly prudish,
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Right. At a Beijing's single fair, this is 2024, the straight time.
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So keep in mind, this is all like really modern that this is happening and concurrent with all of this stuff.
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During a government-sponsored dating event, one 30-year-old engineer,
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He spoke to a 28-year-old lawyer who listed her requirements within three minutes.
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A man earning at least $30,000 a month, or $4,200, owning a car, willing to support her and her parents financially.
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When he admitted he only earned half that $2,100 a month, which is still a very decent salary,
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Well, I don't care. I would have walked away if I were him because I'm not supporting anyone.
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I would have walked away if I were him. I would have been glad she walked away if I couldn't,
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I didn't have the energy from being so shocked by her demands.
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He says, women are, we're unreasonably picky, expecting millionaires only.
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You know, I feel like to an extent we get this in the United States,
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it's just that women aren't as transparent or as fast to voice what they're really looking for.
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And so you get a little too much pussing around before they're like,
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I suppose. I just, it would seem then that women and men are
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culturally unable to marry in China if they are adhering to normative cultural standards.
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That this is a culture that has rendered itself, sterilized itself completely non-viable
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from a marriage market standpoint. That is insane.
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What are they going to do? I mean, can the, can the government intervene?
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Can the government say, sorry, we're not doing this anymore.
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Like your family is, cannot expect to be supported by your daughter's husband.
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What would you do? What would you do if you were Xi Jinping?
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Tantan dating app encounter. So let's say, okay, not just the marriage markets,
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A 32-year-old delivery driver, Zhang Bo, shared his experience on the dating app Tantan
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with Channel News Asia. He matched with a 27-year-old office worker and after a brief chat,
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asked for his WeChat to see his quote-unquote moments, social media posts to gauge his lifestyle.
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When Wang Zhou shared photos of his modest apartment, she responded, quote,
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you live like that? I need someone with ambition, end quote.
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Zhang felt her tone was, quote-unquote, condescending and stopped messaging her.
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He noted that many women on apps, quote, act superior, focusing only on wealth or status,
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which made him feel like a failure and quit online dating.
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Yeah, I would too. It's horrible. That's horrible.
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I absolutely refuse leftover women over 30. This one's already 32.
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A reporter asks, but aren't you 35? She's three years younger than you,
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and I've seen that her job is very stable. The man replied,
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I haven't been unfamiliar with leftover women in my life. Let me tell you,
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leftover women over 30 all share six common flaws.
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The reporter asked him to elaborate. The young man explained,
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First, having seen the world when they were young, they develop sky-high standards and feel that no
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one is good enough for them. Second, even though their looks have already started to decline,
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they still live in the glory of their youth, casually dismissing any man as ugly or unattractive.
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Third, their fertility is on the downturn, so having children in the future may be difficult.
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Fourth, their personalities are generally hard to get along with. If they were more amiable,
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someone would have already swept them off their feet. Fifth, it's not about love at all. It's all
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a transaction. They immediately start negotiating conditions with you, asking about your car,
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house, salary, and even whether your parents have a pension. It's all calculated.
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Six, if they once had a decent boyfriend, they use the standards they set for their ex
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when choosing the next one, insisting that the new guy must be even better.
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Have they ever thought that if their ex was so good to them, why didn't they marry him?
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The reporter then commented that the young man's views were too absolute, saying,
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So you think that all unmarried women over 30 have problems? But you're 35 and still single.
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Doesn't that suggest you might have problems too? The young man answered,
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If I have problems, I dare to admit them. But would she dare to admit hers?
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Another dating event that had 800 women and 40 men, a 29-year-old salesman. So this is one of the
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good ones, right? Talked about the encounter and said it made him bitter. A 30-year-old accountant
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asked him to list his assets within the first five minutes of talking. When he mentioned he was still
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saving for a home, she laughed and said, Good luck finding someone with those prospects before moving
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to another man. So this is at an event where this woman realized there are 40 men and 800 women.
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She goes to one of the 40 men in one of these lines and her first thing is list your assets. And then
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Yeah, the level of insanity. When you're in a beggar, you're in the beggar position. You know,
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beggars can't be choosers. I can't understand this. Are men and women, do you think, super culturally
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isolated where they cannot understand how insane they sound? Because I feel like most people should
00:22:13.340
Well, so keep in mind, in China, most of your friends are going to be of your family network
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because you have much more, like, closer family ties. And so they may not be as, like, and then in
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social settings, because, you know, it's easy to gender segregate, they really may just not have
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many male friends outside their families who can correct their expectations. And family members,
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because they want to be supported, right? They're going to be pushing it.
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Get your bag, girl, right? You know, that's, that's...
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That makes sense. Yeah. If you're only friends or your brother who also would love the idea of
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you marrying someone who pays for his video game Hikikomori lifestyle.
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Yeah. Of course he's going to be like, hey, yeah, no, of course this is the right thing to do.
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Yeah. He would be dumb to not. Yeah. He is, he is, he doesn't lose anything for her not marrying
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and he has a lot to gain for her marrying someone who does that, who signs up for that scam.
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Is they're not making a mistake? Like they're actually being really shrewd in their dating
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in terms of listing what they expect from a partner and then quickly moving on when a partner
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doesn't have that, right? Like that's really important. That's what I did when I'm dating.
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That's what I always recommend that people do when dating. Go out, tell people what you're looking for.
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Yeah. But also the, the, the, the, the secondary part here is you need to adjust
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your expectations based on the market dynamics.
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Yeah. They, they don't seem to be responding to feedback. Maybe they don't have a shot at
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I just don't like before I go first, I just don't see how you could be in an event with 800 women,
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40 men look around, like be in a line to talk to one of these men, see all of these women
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clamoring over these men. Right. Yeah. And then not be like, I am the one on the back foot here.
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It's, it's, it's, it's women have, have become a way in this country where nobody wants us,
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right? Like more broadly, it's her wider category of human that is uninteresting to these men.
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The rest of this matchmaking scene turned into a textbook example.
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Today, a couple came into our agency for a blind date. After they sat down, the man immediately
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asked a woman, how much do you earn per month? She said, a bit over 8,000 yuan. Then the man said,
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your family must be quite well off, right? The woman replied, just average. My parents are ordinary.
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The man then asked, have you bought a house? She answered no. After hearing that, the man said,
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then let's not talk any further. I've got something to do. The young woman was a bit baffled and said,
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you start by asking about my income. Are you really here for a blind date? The man responded,
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it's not like that. I just think we're not a good match. So let's not waste our time.
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Then the woman asked, what exactly is wrong with us? The man replied, if you really want to know,
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I'll tell you. As soon as I walked in, I noticed your bag costs tens of thousands of yuan,
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yet your salary is only about 8,000. Moreover, you're renting a shared apartment, perhaps,
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where the rent is about 1,000, food costs about 1,500, and utilities plus other
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expenses add up to roughly 1,000. And on top of that, you still have to buy clothes. Honestly,
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your clothes aren't cheap either. So can you really manage to save 1,000 yuan a month? I'd say
00:25:34.140
even 1,000 yuan is too much for you to save. Given all that, the only possible explanations for you
00:25:39.100
having a bag worth tens of thousands of yuan are these. Either someone gifted it to you, in which
00:25:44.100
case, why would they give you such an expensive bag? Or you bought it on credit. Am I supposed to
00:25:49.080
help you pay it off? Or third, the bag is fake. If you can't afford the real thing,
00:25:53.460
then there's no need for you to buy one. But insisting on buying a fake just doesn't sit
00:25:57.460
right with me. The young woman, clearly indignant, said, can't I just save up for a year or two and
00:26:02.660
buy a bag I really like? The man replied, if you're scrimping every month just to buy that bag,
00:26:07.500
then we're even less compatible. And then the young woman almost burst into tears from anger.
00:26:11.780
By the way, I gotta say, I agree with the man's shrewdness in this particular story.
00:26:16.280
I think that this was the right approach. People who like luxury items can make your life miserable
00:26:23.960
really, really quickly. And who will, because if she is going through periods of austerity to get a
00:26:34.260
luxury item like this, she's going to demand that you do the same because she has a taste for this
00:26:40.420
sort of stuff. Whereas a sane person is just like, it's just a bag. Like, why would I want that
00:26:45.540
except to signal to other people or to myself that I am X type of person? And if you need to signal
00:26:51.960
that to yourself, you're going to need to do that throughout your entire life. And you're going to
00:26:55.540
need more and more to do that. If you want to go through some other theories here, which I think
00:27:00.420
are closer to accurate, we have the lying flat theory. Urban men are increasingly rejecting marriage
00:27:06.660
itself, not just events due to changing values. The rise of lying flat and anti-consumerist movements
00:27:13.020
among youth reflects disillusionment with traditional milestones like marriage, which is seen as a
00:27:18.200
financial and emotional burden. Women, despite embracing independence, 44% don't plan to marry,
00:27:23.900
still face stronger social pressure to wed, driving them to events. And that might be another thing that
00:27:29.920
we're seeing at these events. Oh, they don't actually want to get married. They don't actually want to or
00:27:33.920
plan to get married. They're sort of forced to be there. And so they don't mind walking around and
00:27:37.560
insulting men at these events. Oh, that could explain these insane demands.
00:27:45.260
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they make more sense as insane demands of someone who
00:27:49.900
would be happy to live alone anyway. But sure, if someone's going to pay for this and that and the
00:27:56.420
other thing, I guess I'll get married. But then if not, yeah, no interest. That totally makes sense.
00:28:03.920
Event accessibility and design. So this is another problem that they don't often talk about in these
00:28:08.980
articles where they complain about these events. Matchmaking events are often structured in ways
00:28:13.260
that determine men. For example, high entry fees like 600-1 in Shenzhen, strict screening,
00:28:19.780
e.g. income and education. So you can't even get any of your looking uses as an arbitrage opportunity.
00:28:24.120
Wow. Or public formats, e.g. parents posting profiles, which favor women who are more
00:28:28.720
willing to pay slash invest due to social stigma. Men, especially non-elites, see these as elitist
00:28:35.100
or rigged status competitions. Yeah. Well, and I could imagine someone thinking in principle when
00:28:41.680
setting these events up, well, we have men must be more desperate because there are many more men
00:28:47.960
than women. Therefore, we will charge them more. And not really understanding, not reading the room
00:28:53.340
and then charging them a lot more. Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, you can continue to charge if women
00:28:59.520
fail to see that they are the problem. Right? Like, and this is civilization ending for China with their
00:29:08.060
current fertility rate. Right? Like, this is astronomically bad. It appears that where you're
00:29:14.260
only getting strong marriage rates is in rural regions where you have the less technologically
00:29:18.080
and economically productive populations of China, which is going to eventually bring China back to
00:29:22.900
its previous poverty. Right? If those are the only cultures within China that continue to breed.
00:29:27.580
Especially if everyone was in these rural environments who gets educated, moves to cities,
00:29:32.020
which then act as fertility grinders, which creates a dysgenic, i.e. it rewards and well, I'll put it the
00:29:39.360
other way. It punishes the genes that lead to higher educational attainment and higher income attainment.
00:29:45.100
And ambition and risk-taking a lot of the things that help countries become wealthy. Yes.
00:29:50.540
Yeah. How would I fix this in China? I mean, I think one thing that could easily be done to fix this
00:29:56.760
and would be cohesive with China's ancestral culture is to move to a polygynous marriage style
00:30:05.220
where wealthy Chinese men marry multiple women. If women just aren't going to consider men who aren't
00:30:12.060
wealthier than them, then what you should do is have, you know, two to three women for every one
00:30:17.480
of these wealthy men and they'll be able to support the additional kids anyway. So they're likely to
00:30:21.340
have even more kids. Outside of emperors having lots of courtesans, was that common with other
00:30:25.940
wealthy Chinese men historically? I can try to check in a post. Here is what Grok has to say.
00:30:32.000
Polygamy is particularly a man having multiple wives was common in Chinese history,
00:30:36.360
especially among the elite. In ancient China, from the Shang to the Zhao, this was 1600 to B.C.E.,
00:30:45.840
to 256 B.C.E. dynasties, kings and nobles often had multiple wives and concubines to secure alliances,
00:30:52.280
produce heirs, and display wealth. The practice was codified in Confucian texts, which emphasized
00:30:57.040
family hierarchy and male authority. For example, the Book of Rights outlined rules for men of different
00:31:02.820
ranks to have a primary wife, Qi, and a secondary wife for concubines, Kuei. During the Han and Tang
00:31:10.940
dynasties, polygamy remained widespread among emperors, aristocrats, and wealthy merchants.
00:31:16.180
Emperors maintained large harems, sometimes in the thousands of concubines. The Song and Ming
00:31:22.460
dynasty, so we've gone from 206 B.C.E. now to 1644 B.C.E., they saw stricter social norms, but
00:31:30.540
polygamy persisted among the gentry. A man could take any additional wife or concubine for reasons like
00:31:36.600
producing male heirs or enhancing status. By the 19th to 20th centuries, Western influence had reduced
00:31:44.580
Yeah, I mean, you know, in like the dramas, of course, it only shows up like within the walls of
00:31:52.540
But that could be an option and would be cohesive potentially with Chinese sort of ancestral ethics.
00:32:01.180
Not what I would prefer for my kids, not what I would opt for my family, but, you know, I'm going
00:32:06.700
to be honest, it seems more realistic adopting to a culture where males take multiple wives than
00:32:12.140
adopting to a culture where women expect less of men. Because that's hard to do, right? And the other
00:32:17.880
positive thing about moving to this system is it would have positive genetic effects instead of
00:32:23.860
Because the men was the strongest gene, like more men would wash out of the gene pool, which would cause
00:32:29.080
social disharmony, which isn't great, but you already have that degree of social disharmony.
00:32:34.400
And social disharmony matters less if it's coming from the least economically relevant players in
00:32:40.640
society. Social disharmony matters more when it's coming from larger economically relevant players.
00:32:46.280
Right. Because that's where the state's going to feel the hit.
00:32:49.820
It's all about what's happening with the money bags.
00:32:53.720
The other option is, very obvious option is ban. You could create a government regulations that make
00:33:02.380
it harder to move up and stuff like that if you're not married, just putting higher pressure on
00:33:06.000
marriage, right? Or heavy taxes if you're unmarried after a certain age or something like that,
00:33:14.320
The next is to change cultural expectations about what happens within married, i.e.
00:33:18.960
governments banning bride prices and taking care of the elderly.
00:33:22.320
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. But then again, they kind of need someone to take care of the
00:33:25.440
elderly, considering that they're not going to be able to.
00:33:28.180
Well, the government does have its murder van for people who break the law that they did that
00:33:32.340
ad for that we've shown in a previous video where they drive around and they're like,
00:33:35.380
if you break the law, we'll come to your house and we'll just euthanize you in a van.
00:33:39.340
Yeah, maybe they can do what Canada did with their euthanasia program, just with their mobile vans.
00:33:48.700
Yeah. The moment you run out of money as an elderly individual, the murder van comes to
00:33:53.460
your house. That's what China can do. And that's not out of feasibility for China.
00:33:58.040
When I was living in China for 10 years, I mean, I knew that there were death vans in China,
00:34:03.160
but it was always one of those dark things that lived in conversation, not necessarily in real
00:34:09.600
life. But China's death vans or execution vans, these cars that just show up and execute you
00:34:17.220
for stuff that I'll explain to you later, and they take you away forever. They're real.
00:34:22.780
They're very, very real. The crazy thing is that they want their citizens to know about the vans
00:34:31.260
and they really, really want them to feel scared. I'm not kidding. Not only does this death van pull
00:34:37.220
up and take your life, it's being promoted. They probably do it in some more discreet way or say
00:34:42.460
that like you're doing your civic duty or something. The other thing that they could do is ask women to
00:34:47.960
be less picky and find a way of socially punishing women who act like this at events or who think like
00:34:55.520
this, right? Like women should feel embarrassed to have these types of expectations in the way that
00:35:02.040
in the United States, there has been a big campaign basically to make women embarrassed about having
00:35:06.420
these expectations through, you know, huge amounts of YouTube videos that go into this and stuff like
00:35:11.040
that. I mean, you've seen this, right? Like you would know in the U S because even as a woman,
00:35:15.040
you're going to be exposed to some amount of like red pill, MGTOW content. And you're going to be
00:35:18.840
like, Oh, I don't want to be like one of those idiot women who they like interview outside of a club
00:35:23.420
who, you know, have completely insane financial expectations and all want a guy who's six foot
00:35:28.660
or whatever. But anyway, thoughts. I think all those are feasible. I do think that if, if someone tried
00:35:35.100
to regulate things like bride prices and expectations around paying off family members, people would just
00:35:41.420
circumvent that, you know, I feel like there's, there's some stuff you can't really outlaw people
00:35:47.040
will do it anyway. You, we might just need to skip a step and have China just start to make children
00:35:55.120
of the state in a way it's, it's, they're better off for it because they're 100% their kids, they can
00:36:04.040
raise them fully indoctrinated. They already have experience building infrastructure where they own
00:36:10.320
people and educate them in camps with the Uyghurs, for example, they would just do this and
00:36:18.140
presumably be a little nicer, but maybe they don't feel like they have to be. But I feel like given
00:36:24.040
this additional information, I thought China might wait a while to do that. But now I feel like it's
00:36:30.000
getting to a point where it may make sense for them to just offer women, you know, gestational
00:36:38.560
surrogacy payment and then just take the babies and raise them as a state, as a state. Yeah.
00:36:47.380
Yeah. And then you could better, they have dormitories, they have schools, they train them
00:36:50.920
for whatever jobs. I mean, because then as the state, you will be able to shift your education
00:36:55.760
system on a dime for, for your state children to educate them for whatever it is you need as the
00:37:03.760
global economy shifts. So if suddenly you need more people who are really good with energy
00:37:07.760
infrastructure, immediately you are shifting all the schooling.
00:37:12.920
Yeah. They grew up energy is everything. You know, they, they, you grew up being trained to be an
00:37:17.700
engineer from a young age, right? Like, yeah, you just have so much more control. And I think
00:37:21.260
ultimately China wants that level of control over its citizens. Why not just, I mean, this,
00:37:28.620
this kills several birds with one stone. Uh, and I feel like that could, your dystopian solutions.
00:37:34.860
I love it. Well, I'm just thinking about what would actually work to maintain stability in the
00:37:40.520
country. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think one of the things is, is for generations across almost every
00:37:47.680
human society, women have done a service for the state for free, which is having and raising kids.
00:37:55.300
Yeah. And I mean, this would just be making it fair, you know, we're, we will pay you
00:37:59.940
to be a gestational carrier and then to give your child to the state and we will give your child.
00:38:06.820
But the point I'm making here is that I think that people haven't realized how twisted it is for the
00:38:12.660
state to expect individuals within a country to bear the cost of both risking your life to have the
00:38:21.820
next generation of taxpayers. And then you investing and raising the next generation of
00:38:26.700
taxpayers when they expect to reap the rewards of that. Yeah. It, it, it makes sense for the family
00:38:35.860
to take on the burden when the family reaps most of the reward at this point. And this is an
00:38:42.140
interesting thing. I haven't really thought about this way before, but you pointed out something
00:38:46.680
really big. What has also shifted after the industrial revolution and especially with the
00:38:51.800
rise of social services and like the, a largely socialized state is that now the government reaps
00:39:01.340
the vast majority of the benefit from new people being created. That's crazy. Yeah. Because what do
00:39:10.360
parents get in the United States? You don't get old age care. You don't get workers. You get the,
00:39:16.280
you get the satisfaction of watching your children flourish, which now is happening at lower and lower
00:39:21.240
rates because youth is struggling. So I know as a parent, you usually get workers for the farm.
00:39:27.800
You used to get a little person you could send to a factory who'd work for you. And then you had old age
00:39:31.880
care and you had old age care, right? None of that exists anymore. And the main benefit of having kids is
00:39:38.240
the state, the main beneficiary. Yeah. I didn't consider that, but you're absolutely right. Yeah.
00:39:41.660
My God. Yeah. So then China is going to have to just create it. I mean, when, when the primary
00:39:48.280
beneficiary, yeah, I guess in the end, in, in most economies, it has to be the person who wants the
00:39:55.300
product pays for the product. And we see an economic failure here when the thing that wants the product
00:40:02.520
is unwilling to pay for it. And, and obviously now the product is, is, is going out of stock.
00:40:10.880
No one's making it anymore because you know, no one's willing to pay for it, I guess.
00:40:16.560
That's huh. Wow. Well, that changes the way I look at things, but yeah, that's, that's what I would
00:40:21.940
do. If I were Xi Jinping, I would already be looking to where I'm going to set up the dormitories,
00:40:27.520
the schools, the infrastructure, it's all there. I mean, I'm sure there are regions that you think
00:40:32.460
like Xi Jinping and you go at this, like a, an autistic woman where it's like, if I was Xi
00:40:39.220
Jinping, well, I just demand that I have to impregnate every woman in the country who doesn't
00:40:43.740
get married. I'd go the Elon strategy, right? I don't know. I don't know where the state would
00:40:48.680
source sperm. I imagine they would just choose like whatever, by whatever measure, like really
00:40:55.960
high performing men. They wouldn't even need necessarily to pay them for it. Cause I think
00:41:02.020
men would just be like, this is great. They need to pay the women, but yeah, we don't need
00:41:08.560
to wait for artificial wombs for this to be something that especially the Chinese state
00:41:13.160
would do at scale. You could just take a region that's rapidly depopulating, take over its
00:41:20.020
entire hospital, make the entire thing for maternity. Yeah. Anyway.
00:41:41.420
Yeah, RFAB.ai. If anybody wants to check it out now, it used to be like a terrible site
00:41:50.020
But no, it was not like fun to play around with. Like a bunch of things are broken.
00:41:54.640
Now I got... I was like, you know what? I'm going to try to learn to vibe code. I'm going
00:41:58.800
to try to push this project forward as fast as I can. After like two weeks of working on
00:42:03.180
it, you'd say, Simone, while I was traveling, while we were shooting with HBO, I was able
00:42:08.820
to, it was a huge help from Bruno, get a really, I think, sort of high quality AI chat adventure
00:42:14.200
thing out. So if people want to check that out now, it'll get better every week.
00:42:17.740
And it's a lot better, I would just say than any of the other mainstream AI chat apps you'd
00:42:25.660
had me try. So I'm impressed. Even at this early stage, if you want a better one, just
00:42:34.940
The two sections that are really working well are the adventure mode and the not safe for
00:42:37.860
work mode. So try that out. The adventure mode is the one that we've put the most time
00:42:41.680
into. So try it out. Anyway. But so really, like when you checked it out, did you check
00:42:49.760
out like the narrative engine maker and stuff like that yet?
00:42:51.940
I haven't tried that. I only, I only tried the, the like pre-made.
00:42:56.580
It basically allows you to create like complicated multi-pass AI engines for more complicated types
00:43:04.860
Which I think is really fun as a, as sort of a, a concept for people to play around
00:43:10.520
Yeah, no, it is, it is objectively fantastic. I love it.
00:43:15.660
Actually, I just had an idea for a feature. I want to add pair engine with scenario for
00:43:27.560
I plan to make one for like battles and stuff like that, which I'll put together and one
00:43:33.260
for like city management so we can have different types of AIs running on it, which I'm quite
00:43:36.360
excited about. But yeah, things move so fast when I'm the one being in the grunt work, right?
00:43:44.840
Well, yeah, I, I love that I have a new skill. I can code now. That's awesome.
00:43:52.280
Torsten, did you just say, come down and try to hurt daddy?
00:44:01.400
Do you know that people think that I hurt you, Toasty? People think daddy hurts you?
00:44:10.120
Because you want to hurt me, because it's so funny.
00:44:17.120
And you hurt me, so I'm hurting you and it's so funny.
00:44:21.740
Okay. And you're going to try to hurt me too, Titan, now?
00:44:36.260
No, wait, Titan, we're just trying to have a conversation here.
00:45:58.780
You can't jump from there, you will certainly die!