Bare branches

光棍危机

China’s alarming sex imbalance

令人担忧的性别失衡问题

“Of course I want to get married,” says Fu, a lorry driver in Yiyang, a far-flung county in Jiangxi province. Once a migrant worker, the 36-year-old returned to the village to live with his ageing parents. They are anxious for him to tie the knot. “But there are few women,” he sighs. The eligible girls around him are all spoken for; others have left to work in cities.

“我当然想结婚，”来自江西省偏远县城益阳的卡车司机傅师傅说道。现年36岁的他曾是一名农民工，如今回到村里与年迈的父母同住。父母都盼着他早日成家。“但村里姑娘太少了，”他无奈地叹了口气。身边适龄女孩大多已名花有主，剩下的也都进城打工去了。

Fu’s plight is not uncommon. Men like him are known as guang gun—bare branches, unable to bear fruit. Their numbers began to increase more than a decade ago. But the scale of the problem is now becoming clear. 

傅师傅的困境并非个例。像他这样的男性被称为“光棍”——无法开枝散叶的“枯枝”。 这类群体自十余年前开始激增，而如今问题的严重性已清晰可见。

The Economist has analysed data from the UN’s World Population Prospects, a biennial report, and from China’s 2020 census. The data reveal that the sex ratio—the number of men for every 100 women—among men aged 23-37 and women aged 22-36 will hit a peak of 119 by 2027. (Those are the ages between which 80% of each sex gets married.) It is then predicted to remain high for decades. In 2012 the ratio was just 105.

本刊分析了联合国《世界人口展望》双年度报告以及中国2020年人口普查数据：预计到2027年，23-37岁男性与22-36岁女性性别比将达到119:100的峰值。（此年龄段覆盖了80%的适婚人群。）预计未来数十年内，这一比例都将维持高位。而在2012年，这一比例仅为105:100。

That means that in 2027 there will be 22.5m more men than women in those cohorts, by far the largest number of “surplus” young males ever recorded anywhere. What is more, the share of unmarried men aged 25-39 shot up from 13% to 30% from 2006 to 2022.

这意味着到2027年，该年龄段男性将比女性多出2250万人，创下全球范围内“剩男”数量的历史纪录。更严峻的是，2006年至2022年间，25-39岁未婚男性的比例从13%飙升至30%。

It was brought about by the arrival in the 1980s of cheap ultrasound machines, which allowed parents across Asia to tell the sex of their unborn child. The widespread preference for sons opened the door to sex-selective abortions. In South Korea the sex ratio at birth hit a brief peak of 117 in 1994, before falling to 106 in 2012, where it has roughly remained.In India it was 109 as late as 2010 (in 2024 it was 107). In developed countries like America and Britain, it was around 105 in 2024.

危机源于1980年代廉价超声设备的普及，使亚洲父母得以检测胎儿性别。重男轻女传统催生了选择性堕胎。韩国新生儿性别比曾在1994年短暂达到117峰值，2012年回落至106后保持稳定；印度该数值2010年仍高达109（2024年为107）；英美等发达国家2024年约为105。

In China the problem was made worse by demographic engineering. In 1973 the country began trying to reduce its population with the “later, longer and fewer” campaign. This was followed by the draconian one-child policy in 1979. Being given just one chance dramatically lowered couples’ chances of having a boy naturally, and further incentivised sex selection. As a result, China has suffered by far the worst imbalance in its sex ratio at birth.

在中国，人口调控政策进一步加剧了这一问题。1973年推行的“晚、稀、少”生育政策以及1979年严格推行的独生子女政策，使家庭自然生育男孩的几率骤降，性别选择愈演愈烈。这导致中国新生儿性别失衡程度远超他国。

Now that those boys are grown up, migration is adding to their woes. The 2020 census showed the sex ratio for young adults was 106 in urban areas and 120 in rural ones. Young rural women who move to the city often marry richer urban men. But changing social mores around marriage mean many better-educated urban women do not want to get married at all, let alone to rural men, shrinking the dating pool yet further. 

如今，这些男孩已长大成人，而人口流动又加剧了他们的婚恋困境。2020年人口普查数据显示，城市地区青年人口性别比为106，农村地区则高达120。进城务工的农村女性往往选择嫁给条件更优越的城市男性，而社会观念的转变又让许多高学历城市女性不愿结婚，更遑论嫁给农村男性，这使得适婚人群进一步减少。

Statistics released on February 8th showed that the number of marriages in China in 2024 fell by 20% from the previous year, to 6.1m. That is less than half the number registered in 2013, and the lowest number since the 1980s.

2月8日公布的数据显示，2024年中国结婚登记数较上年下降20%，仅为610万对，不足2013年登记量的一半，创下1980年代以来新低。

Some guang gunare resigned to their fate. Guo, a 38-year-old musician in Shangrao, near to Fu’s village, has been on a couple of blind dates. On one, he met an overachiever who studied in Germany and worked as a manager for a car company. It was “useless”, he says. On another date, the woman “scrutinised my family background as if it were a business deal”.

一些光棍已经认命。上饶38岁音乐人郭先生（与傅师傅邻村）经历过数次相亲，但都无果而终。一次遇到留德归来的汽车公司女高管，郭先生坦言“根本不可能”，还有一次遭遇女方“像谈生意一样盘问我的家底”。

As women grow scarcer they also become more valuable. Bride prices (a payment from the groom’s family to the bride’s to seal the marriage) have soared. One survey in Liaoning, a north-eastern province, found that the bride price in rural areas jumped from 68,000 yuan ($9,000) in 2016 to 176,000 yuan in 2020, adjusting for inflation. Another, across 11 provinces, found that costs of marriage (including expenses like housing and matchmaking) for rural males were 7.6 times higher after 2010 than before 2000.

随着女性资源愈发稀缺，其“身价”也水涨船高。彩礼（男方家庭向女方家庭支付的聘礼）不断攀升。东北某省的一项调查显示，农村地区彩礼金额从2016年的6.8万元（约合9000美元）飙升至2020年的17.6万元（按通胀调整后）。另一项覆盖11个省份的调查发现，2010年后农村男性的结婚成本（包括购房、婚介等费用）是2000年前的7.6倍。

The shortage of women has had other side-effects. Between July and December of 2018 the Chinese government, working with police inMyanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, jointly rescued 1,130 foreign women who had been trafficked into China to be married. The Communist Party, obsessed with social stability, also worries a lot about rootless young men with no family prospects.

性别失衡还引发了一系列连锁反应。2018年7月至12月，中国政府联合缅甸、柬埔寨、老挝、越南、泰国警方，共解救了1130名被拐卖至中国成婚的外籍女性。对中国而言，这些无家无业的年轻男性不仅威胁社会稳定，更是一颗潜在的“定时炸弹”。

The ratio in young adults will remain above 115 well into the 2040s. The main hope is that, since peaking in the mid-2000s, the sex ratio at birth has declined. Cultural changes and female economic empowerment have chipped away at couples’ preference for sons. Eventually, the numbers of young men and women could equalise. But that will come as little consolation for today’s rural bachelors.

预计到2040年代，中国青年人口性别比仍将维持在115以上。唯一的好消息是，出生人口性别比自2005年中期达到峰值后已开始回落。随着文化观念的转变和女性经济地位的提升，人们对男孩的偏好正在逐渐减弱，未来男女比例有望趋于平衡。但对当下的农村光棍而言，这不过是远水难解近渴的安慰。

（红色标注词为重难点词汇）

重难点词汇：

far-flung [ˌfɑːr ˈflʌŋ] adj. 广布的；遥远的

tie the knot 结婚；喜结连理

biennial [baɪˈeniəl] adj. 两年一次的

abortion [əˈbɔːrʃn] n. 流产；堕胎；夭折

draconian [drəˈkoʊniən] adj. 严苛的；严厉的；苛刻的

mores [ˈmɔːreɪz] n. 习俗；风尚；道德规范