The weather today was positively balmy at 6°C, a vast improvement. MyTown erupted with excitement earlier this week due to a visit from no less than the President of China. Turns out our mayor is his nephew. Sadly, there was no public appearance, which I would have been delighted to attend whatever the weather. Below, official social media produced to celebrate the visit.
East China Normal University (华东师范大学) in Shanghai was my home in 2018 and 2019. ECNU is highly-ranked in China, among the top 30 universities in the country. I felt privileged and very fortunate to be offered a position there. My teaching load included English Writing and TOEFL, which is a comprehensive English language examination required for admission to British universities, although test results can be used to apply for admission to Australian, Canadian and even US schools.
My direct employer was a Chinese corporation based in Shanghai. The company worked with numerous Commonwealth and Chinese institutions, providing teachers to a program whereby students completed two years at a designated Chinese school, then moved on to a Western uni for two years to complete their degrees. If a student at ECNU wanted to graduate from a UK university, they had to take my courses.
In every one of my classes, at some point during the semester, I ran a thought experiment, solely for my own interest. I would say to the class “Imagine there’s a knock on the classroom door. I go over and open it, and there’s a man standing there. I turn back and say ‘hey everybody, please welcome my husband.’”
The response was identical every single time. Instant wild cheering, whistling, and extended applause – an unfettered and wholly-enthusiastic endorsement. I regret not having set up my phone to video at least one of these interactions. Despite strict government and media restrictions on any messaging involving feminism, LGBT, woke, etc., my students seemed to have been influenced by Western narratives.
The family has traditionally been honored in China as the highest form of social participation and social order, which is reflected in the language. The word 阴 yin denotes ‘the feminine, passive or negative principle in nature, the moon’ while 阳 yang (rhymes with ‘sung’) refers to ‘the masculine, active or positive principle in nature, the sun.’
The social order, to be viable, must promote and protect a balance between these forces, thus providing a foundational basis for society and civilization, a very Confucian concept. “In his imagination he (Confucius) saw society as a building of several floors, each floor supported by pillars on the floor below. The lowest level of pillars were those of filial piety and similar family-based virtues. If they were neglected the entire structure would come crashing down.”
This is clearly evident when contemplating the many Chinese words which describe precisely how one stands within the family tree. For example 老姨父 laoyifu is the common form of address for ‘mother’s youngest sister’s husband.’ Addressing kin in such specifically detailed terms shows that family is important in China. But a significant cultural shift is underway, one that holds real implications for the country in the long term.
My female students at ECNU were not much different than similar females in the West. They were reasonably intelligent, expected to graduate and get good jobs with government or multinational corporations, perhaps one day consider settling down and having a family, although that last was a lower priority for most I spoke to. Their interest in men was largely limited to 高富帅 gaofushuai, Mr. Perfect - tall, rich and handsome.
The young men were more likely to want a wife, kids, a family, but conceded that the costs were high – at minimum they needed to own an apartment and a car and have a good job with a respectable salary, along with the added burden that many of them were simply not tall, rich and handsome enough to attract a mate. A dowry was also necessary – a good friend of mine paid ¥100,000 to the parents of his wife, for example. That’s considered a relatively modest sum in this context, btw. Readers should be wondering by now – did I buy/pay for Humble Wife? If you ask in the comments, I’ll tell you the answer and include a bonus tale.
The one-child policy had long been lifted by this time, but most of my students acknowledged that kids were expensive, time-consuming and troublesome. And so, at the risk of over-generalizing, young women saw (future) husbands and kids as a burden while young men saw wife and kids as a benefit, albeit an increasingly unachievable one.
As with most every country in the world, China is fully part of modern civilization. Everyone has a smart-phone, wi-fi and Internet access. Literacy is high at 97%, education is mandatory through completion of Grade 9, people dress similarly to Westerners, more and more drive cars (Shanghai traffic jams are legendary), China has the longest high-speed rail and highway networks in the world, and so on.
Thus it’s no surprise to find that divorce in modern China has effectively become no-fault, with the newly-classic outcome of mom gets the kids and the house, dad gets the bill (although enforcement is minimal, I’m told – there are no ‘Family Maintenance Enforcement’ gestapos operating here, despite which kids don’t go homeless or hungry). Totally Predictable Result: divorce rates are rising, marriage rates are falling, the number of children being born is falling, and the total fertility rate is also falling (less than 1.2 based on 2024 data, far below the 2.1 necessary to maintain population).
For the first time outside the context of war, epidemic disease or famine, China’s massive population is declining steadily (click here for a live counter). With 1.4 billion souls, one might reasonably argue a net benefit, both to China and to the world, of such a reduction. And in truth, China is heavily dependent on external resources, particularly energy and food (oil, coal, natural gas, wheat, soy, corn, and so on – where do you think America’s unwanted chicken toes end up?). A smaller population would clearly be more sustainable and place less pressure on world production and on the environment. But there’s a downside or two as well, which we’ll consider in a future post.
Update: perusing my archives the day after posting this article, I came across a piece previously published in 2015 (on a now defunct web platform) in which I wrote: Another decade or more will probably pass before the effects of these trends are fully manifested, but look for China’s population to start falling.
It wasn’t hard to predict, but I’m convinced the country is still relatively oblivious to the long-term consequences. Part 2 here, part 3 here
Ok...taking the bait. Did you buy Humble Wife?
Tons of significant topics embedded in this story. If western culture were not so immersed in their woke infused self-destruction agenda we might take the time to marvel at the many aspects of China’s modernization, industrial capability, and strong culture to name just a few things. I read somewhere that Chinese manufacturers can produce an I-phone for around $10 US. Amazing! They also produce quality electric cars for much cheaper than those horrible expensive Teslas. Of course both Canada and the US have put a tariff on those, which is truly disgusting considering the mandates in place to switch from gasoline.