Young Men Who Are Anything Short Of Wealthy In Urban China Face Brutal Girlfriend Reality
China has at least more than 30 million more men than women.
As a result, finding a girlfriend there is extremely difficult.
A recent post on reddit helped show just how bad it is. User BoTeeBoTines, an expat living in China, talked about what he has seen in response to a question from user dfevbvjksk asking, "What is it like being a single bachelor in China knowing that the men outnumber women by 34 million?"
I am a single bachelor living in China, but I'm a foreigner. For expats, it's pretty good being single, as there is that foreigner mystique and the general idea that all expats are rich, so finding women is pretty easy.
As for Chinese, it's a bit of a different story. The actual number is closer to 38 million more men, but also realize that this doesn't mean either single men, gay men, or anything else - it's an overall statistic.
That said, there are a LOT of single Chinese guys. Almost every guy in my office is between 21-30 and they're almost all single. To even consider getting a wife, a Chinese guy needs to own a home (apartment in a big city), a car, and preferably make XXX money every month. The women have high expectations (as they're expected to pop out their one-child policy kid before the age of 24-25).
Also keep in mind that there are A LOT of girls/women in various types of sex-related jobs, and many rich successful men get married to someone their family likes then buys 2 or 3 more apartments for their mistresses.
It's a skewed situation either way, but basically, unless you have money as a single guy in China, you're not that well off. Many girls will date the fat, disgusting, old guy with a wife because he can give them $10,000 a month over the handsome, young, kind guy that lives paycheck to paycheck.
BTBT's view was mostly confirmed by user King_of_Murkwood claiming to be a native Chinese woman:
As a young Chinese woman who's lived there for the first 18 years of my life, I can say with confidence that things are pretty grim for the boys and girls back home. Men are expected to possess substantial wealth in order for them to consider marriage and family. This in turn, in my opinion, perpetuates the misogynist notion of women being commodities, because the rich guy almost always gets the girl.
Another aspect of the problem is the rural/urban difference. A rich guy from the city has a much bigger advantage than his rural counterpart, because the rural population tends to be more conservative and their families more extended. That means, a city woman who marries a country guy basically just marries his entire family back in some small rural town.
So in the end, the vast population of bachelors in China is mostly country guys working in cities.
BTBT's view was confirmed by user shrc91, another non-Chinese:
I have visited China on two occasions, once when I was 18 and the other this year (I'm 23 now). I'm British so it was relatively easy to pick up girls in clubs, and as /r/BoTeeBoTines said, the foreigner mystique is quite rampant, especially in the smaller cities where I visited.
However, for the Chinese guys I met it was a completely different story, almost none of them had ever had a girlfriend, and the only one that did had a German girlfriend...
Brutal.