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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   18484 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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I would be interested in learning more about the casual dating market in china. With marriage being gated behind prohibitive sums of money, I would expect people to just not get married. Human desires being what they are though, people are going to find some way to romance and sex. So I would think that situationships, casual flings, maybe lying about seeing someone on the side, would be common practices. The obvious loophole in the social norms. We can tell people that we are dating to figure out if we are a good match, then break up once we realize it would be better to see someone else.

I think in general this hints at a certain weakness of of how China is ruled. It seems like the Chinese government has been attempting to force behavior change through authoritarian means, but with every law they create, some unforeseen side effect pops up. The one-child policy resulted in a huge gender imbalance. Turning the country capitalist made it wealthy, but increased the people's financial anxieties to the point where they are using marriage as a means of making money. Blackmailing people into demanding less money for marriage seemingly just has not worked.

From my point of view, these problems appear to have been caused by government overreach. Perhaps the solution then, is to just let it play out, regulate less, accept life will suck for the next generation, but assume the problem will eventually resolve itself with time.

The casual dating market is not that big in China outside of major cities and even then in particular cohorts. In general dating is considered a serious business and serial monogamy is much less common than the West. I don't think marriage is as gated as the article implies.

As for your second point China loves a good unhinged mass campaign.

The one-child policy resulted in a huge gender imbalance.

I'm surprised that the quoted parts of the article did not mention this. It's arguably the single biggest factor in this whole phenomenon.

Somewhat, but the men and women are in different places. I'd guess the women from the article are middle class to wealthy and in the cities which are majority female. The poor farmers with no prospects and no wives may as well not exist for them.

Ive heard anecdotally that this is less of a factor than Western news reports. Plenty of Chinese families were still having girls, some wealthier families had more than one by buying exemptions, and the rural areas has plenty of dangerous jobs that killed off young men. Still an imbalance of men, but its not some massive imbalance like people think. (Sorry I don't have a good source on hand for this, this is all just what I've remembered reading in the past, I may be wrong)

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