Double Eleven is not only a shopping festival but also known as Singles Day in China. There are “30 million singles” in China. Is this really the case? In fact, there are 17.52 million more men of marriageable age than women according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
In rural areas, the seriously unbalanced gender ratio makes it more difficult for men to find a partner. Some people are reluctant to introduce a partner because the success rate is too low.
Since the 1980s, there has been a high proportion of boys in children born every year in China. As they gradually enter marriage and childbearing age, there has indeed been a phenomenon that men encounter fierce competition in the marriage market and even can’t find a spouse.
However, the distribution of this phenomenon is uneven. This phenomenon is not obvious in large cities due to the supplementary effect of the incoming population, but it will be more prominent in some rural areas, remote areas, and areas with a low level of economic development.
There are differences in the gender ratio of the marriageable population between urban and rural areas.
The gender ratio of the marriageable population in big cities tends to be feminine, resulting in the phenomenon of “older leftover women”; the gender ratio of the marriageable population in the vast rural areas, especially in remote areas, tends to be masculine, resulting in the problem of “grass-roots singles”.
Gender composition should be divided into age groups. From the main marriage and childbearing age group of 20 to 40, there are more than 17 million men than women, not more than 30 million, according to NBS.
Guangdong is the province with the highest proportion of men, accounting for 53.07% of the male population and 46.93% of the female population, with a gender ratio of 113.08. Followed by Hainan, the proportion of the male population is 53.02%, the female population is 46.98%, and the gender ratio is 112.86.
The three northeastern provinces are the most balanced. Among them, Jilin and Liaoning are the only provinces in China where the female population exceeds the male population.