People throughout China expressed anger when an economics expert came up with an idea for handling the problem of more men than women in the population: wife-sharing.
The People's Republic of China recently announced ending its one-child policy and permitting families to have two, largely because population reductions mean an abysmal economic future for the country. Reggie Littlejohn of Women's Rights Without Frontiers says China is touting the future economic gains from the increased population.
"[But] they have not said anything about reducing the terrible gender disparity that they have in China because actually the new two-child policy will do nothing to end the sex-selective abortion of baby girls," she tells OneNewsNow.
Chinese economist professor Xie Zuoshi of Shejiang University has estimated that by 2020 China will have about 40 million more males than females. Littlejohn explains that disparity isn't a problem for those who are wealthy.
"High-income men can find a woman because they can pay a higher price," she says. "[But] what about-low income men?"
Xie's proposed solution is to allow men to share wives. "... He is an economist and he sees the shortage of women as an economic problem that has an economic solution, which is that poor men will put their money together to buy a wife," Littlejohn explains.
Littlejohn
That, she says, is nothing more than a "ham-handed supply-and-demand analysis" that would lead to the "commodification" of women.
"[His] proposal is an outrage and underscores the fact that the largest social experiment in the history of the world – the one-child policy – has resulted in an unmitigated demographic and social disaster," Littlejohn adds.
There was such a negative response the professor has removed his original blog post and has complained that he has been endlessly abused for what he sees as an obvious solution.
In contrast, says Littlejohn, the solution is for the Beijing regime to abandon all coercively enforced birth limits and to enforce its ban on sex-selective abortion.