I agree with you that that is what China's leadership wants.
But it's almost impossible to estimate the kind of pressure that will be put on those leaders, when these 30million+ poor males start realizing they are not going to reproduce.
On top of not having the ability to reproduce, these 30million+ poor males are going to be shouldered with the responsibility of spending their money to support their parents.
It's a psychological crunch if there ever was one. A psychological crunch of epic proportions.
I predict the Chinese authorities already have pacification plans in place. Probably a combination of wide-scale drugging and relentless propaganda emphasizing pacifism, loyalty, and duty to the state. The Chinese authorities will need to find a scapegoat that isn't themselves, and it will probably be some combination of every other country. :)
If the Chinese authorities point the aggression of these poor males in the direction of other countries, you have a recipe for war even if the war is just an Orwellian war-for-show.
I would recommend slavery as an option to relieve the pressure, but typically even slaves are allowed to have children and then the children are used as collateral to keep the men in line when they would otherwise revolt.
Beyond mass-scale drugging and propaganda of unimaginable magnitude I don't see how this can't end violently - whether the violence occurs within China or is exported to some dumping ground like Africa.
How many poor, rural, Chinese men have that option?
It will be the poorest Chinese who go without mates. They are the most violent and the most dangerous, and no country is capable or willing to support the immigration of literally millions of childless and aggressive poor men.
The Chinese leadership really only have two potentially effective options in my view. Try to manage it through pacification campaigns (estrogen in the water?) or send them abroad to die in wars.
The most efficient solution to an excess of geriatrics is euthanasia. (Baby boomers should be worried about this.)
These are bitter pills to swallow.
Chinese social planners are not fools. They know very well that it is better for their excess males to die in battle (and win boons for the country) than for those males to be cooped up in the interior where they will inevitably cause strife.
Even with the most massive pacification campaign in history, that glut of childless-males is guaranteed to cause massive social unrest.
If anything could conquer Asia and India, it would be a gigantic excess of childless males in an authoritarian society. Alexander the Great would have never dreamed of such a perfect country to conquer with.
>The second you give women the opportunity to work instead of raise a pack of squalling children, they seem to prefer work.
Debatable. Women in the West were forced into work due to declining wages. A single income was no longer enough to support a family, and as more women went to work the other families would bid up the price of goods.
Are women choosing to work or doing it out of necessity and social pressure?
Is Hacker News about teaching people things? Or does it have some other goal?