New Thai "Women": A Solution For China's Man Surplus?

One of the more puzzling, and troubling, social trends in the world appears to be taking place in Thailand. That is that a noticeable number of young Thai men are seeking sex change operations that would turn them into women.

That may derive from the mystique of the Thai "bar girl," who is a very sought after commodity. It may also have to do with a somewhat feminine Thai culture that values gentleness and passivity more than ambition and aggression. At any rate, being a woman (and catering to richer, usually foreign men) is seen as such a desirable role that men are crossing gender lines to seek it.

China has the opposite problem. Its culture has always preferred male to female children, in order for parents to maintain the family line, resulting earlier in female infanticide after birth. But modern technology, in the form of pre-natal sex screening, has led to a disproportionate abortion of female fetuses BEFORE birth. This, in turn, has led to a male-female ratio of roughly five to four since such screening became widespread around 1980.

Put another way, there may be a surplus of about 50 million young Chinese men who will not be able to find wives (unless some men "double up" with a single woman, a condition known as polyandry). Jim Rogers and I consider this the single most important demographic fact in the world today (although we disagree on implications).

If "crossovers," create a surplus of Thai women, that might be an outlet for Chinese men. Given a shortage of Thai men, some of the foreigners might be able to find fully "functional" (capable of child bearing) Thai women.

Others would have to "settle" for the "synthetic" kind. But that might be a preferred alternative to the "polyandrous" relationships discussed earlier. And best of all (from a Chinese point of view), such matches would not produce children and increase the population..