Mars Needs Women

was the title of a campy sci-fi/horror film of the the 1960s. Of course, Mars is a frozen, airless rock spinning in infinity and needs nothing.

China, on the other hand is a nation on Earth. In 1979, the Chinese Government adopted a policy of allowing, subject to certain exemptions, each family to have only one child. Wikipedia has a couple of relevant articles. Chinese people, have for various, social and cultural reasons, a strong preference for having boys. So it is not surprising to learn that: "According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, there will be 24 million more men than women of marriageable age by 2020."

This is a problem. Marriage civilizes men. Unmarried men are constant source of disorder and violence. It has been hypothesized that in societies where polygyny is the norm, there is a problem with large groups of unmarried young men. They are often directed to military occupations where they have hope of booty and perhaps a woman to bring home. Even more than the rest of the world, the Chinese regime must worry about this phenomenon in modern China, as a potential source of political disorder in a state without democratic institutions.

Solving the problem is tough, especially when it is due to manipulation of the circumstances of birth. Start to birth more girls today, and the Chinese might have an adequate supply in 2035.  Military raids to steal women are another traditional method, but the risks of triggering a larger war are probably unacceptable. The slave trade was another path, but slavery has a bad name in the modern world.

It is therefore unsurprising to read that the Chinese have taken to buying brides from Pakistan.

"Pakistani Christian girls trafficked to China as brides" By Kathy Gannon and Dake Kang on May 7, 2019 at APNews.com

GUJRANWALA, Pakistan (AP) — ... hundreds of poor Christian girls ... have been trafficked to China in a market for brides that has swiftly grown in Pakistan since late last year, activists say. Brokers are aggressively seeking out girls for Chinese men, sometimes even cruising outside churches to ask for potential brides. They are being helped by Christian clerics paid to target impoverished parents in their congregation with promises of wealth in exchange for their daughters.
* * *

In China, demand for foreign brides has mounted, a legacy of the one-child policy that skewed the country’s gender balance toward males. Brides initially came largely from Vietnam, Laos and North Korea. ... “It’s purely supply and demand,” she said. “It used to be, ‘Is she light-skinned?’ Now it’s like, ‘Is she female?’”

Pakistan seems to have come onto marriage brokers’ radar late last year. ... Since then, an estimated 750 to 1,000 girls have been married off ... Pakistan’s small Christian community, centered in Punjab province, makes a vulnerable target. Numbering some 2.5 million in the country’s overwhelmingly Muslim population of 200 million, Christians are among Pakistan’s most deeply impoverished. They also have little political or social support.

Among all faiths in Pakistan, parents often decide a daughter’s marriage partner. The deeply patriarchal society sees girls as less desirable than boys and as a burden because the bride’s family must pay a dowry and the cost of the wedding when they marry. ... By contrast, potential Chinese grooms offer parents money and pay all wedding expenses. ... They pay on average $3,500 to $5,000, including payments to parents, pastors and a broker ...

We are, of course, expected to be horrified by this gross violation of human rights. The article goes to the source: "Human Rights Watch called on China and Pakistan to take action to end bride trafficking, warning in an April 26 statement of 'increasing evidence that Pakistani women and girls are at risk of sexual slavery in China'."

I have expected to see all along. In that, it is sort of like the College Admissions Scandal, I commented on previously. China has too many men and not enough women. The Muslim countries of MENA and SEA have too many people and not enough capital. The logical thing for both sides is to trade women for money. This will cause white liberals in the EU/USA to have conniption fits, but their disapproval caries no weight in other parts of the world. I do not think that either Islam or Chinese philosophies have any deep seated objection to the idea.

Is there a glimmer of light at the Southern Border?

I have over many years come to despise Tom Friedman, who is the NYTimes lead op-ed columnist, unfailing fountain of pious liberal conventional wisdom, and pompous windbag. Early in his career, he was a reporter on the foreign desk, and as such spent several years in the Middle East. He wrote a book about the experience "From Beirut to Jerusalem", which I thought at the time was pretty good. After he took up residence in the Washington office he started writing bilge like "The World Is Flat". I stopped reading his stuff and I have been calmer, if not happier, since then.


Usually when his columns are linked on the websites that I attend to, it is to ridicule them. Typically with good reason as they are pious liberal conventional wisdom, expressed by a pompous windbag. I was prepared for the usual when I followed a link to: "Trump Is Wasting Our Immigration Crisis: The system needs to be fixed, but “the wall” is only part of the solution." by Thomas L. Friedman on April 23, 2019.

But, when I read this:

SAN DIEGO — On April 12, I toured the busiest border crossing between America and Mexico — the San Ysidro Port of Entry, in San Diego — and the walls being built around it. Guided by a U.S. Border Patrol team, I also traveled along the border right down to where the newest 18-foot-high slatted steel barrier ends and the wide-open hills and craggy valleys beckoning drug smugglers, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants begin.

* * *

The whole day left me more certain than ever that we have a real immigration crisis and that the solution is a high wall with a big gate — but a smart gate.

I said to myself, wow, isn't that almost exactly what Trump has been saying for the last six months? Who let Tom of off the ranch? Last time the subject of a wall came up Nancy Pelosi declared it to be immoral. so, I read on. Tom said that:

Without a high wall, too many Americans will lack confidence that we can control our borders, and they therefore will oppose the steady immigration we need. But for this wall to have a big gate, it has to be a smart and compassionate one, one that says, “Besides legitimate asylum seekers, we’ll accept immigrants at a rate at which they can be properly absorbed into our society and work force, and we’ll favor visa seekers with energies and talents that enrich and advance our society.” That’s the opposite of the unstrategic, far-too random, chaotic immigration “system” we have now.

That’s been a “system” in which millions of people could cross into our country illegally or overstay their visas. Or cross over and claim asylum and then melt into society while awaiting their hearings. Or bring in their family members through family reunification programs. And that’s no matter their possible impact on communities and social welfare resources or their ability to assimilate and contribute to society.

* * *

And in an era when more and more countries will fracture under environmental, population, criminal and technological stresses, we simply cannot take everyone who shows up at our border.

End chain migration. Accept legal immigrants on a rational basis. Revise the asylum system to only admit genuine cases of persecution. Limit the number of legal immigrants to the rate at which they can be absorbed. These are all propositions that Trump and most Republicans can accept.

Of course, Tom is writing for the NYTimes and he must sound the "Orange Man Bad" gong:

Instead, we’re stuck with a man who just exploits the border crisis and uses his “wall” to divide the nation and energize his base.

Or, as Frum put it: “The gratuitous brutalities of the Trump administration shock the conscience, and fail even on their own terms. Intended as deterrents, they are not deterring. They are succeeding only in counter-radicalizing liberal opinion to stigmatize almost all immigration enforcement against nonfelons as cruel, racist and unacceptable.”

I am not a huge Trump fan, but guys like Tom and Frum have spent the last few years criticizing Trump's rhetoric, not on the basis of what Trump said, but of what his Democrat and Media opponents have said that he said. Or, even worse, on the basis of what some drunk in the last row said. Further, Trump's rhetoric is off the cuff, and full of bombast and rodomontade, often humorous, and simply will not bear careful parsing.

But, Tom's exit is graceful:

In sum: we need new walls; we need a serious strategy for mitigating climate change and offering economic and governance assistance to countries to our south that are being destabilized by poverty and extreme weather; we need to rethink who is entitled to asylum, so people fleeing economic dislocation don’t overwhelm our borders and harden our hearts to people truly fleeing tyranny; we need to encourage legal immigration of people who can help our country thrive in the 21st century; and we need to partner with Mexico on a Mexican-American plan to manage the flow of migrants through Mexico to our border. 

None of these alone will work. Anyone who tells you otherwise has not been to the border.

If there were any Democrats in Congress who could bear the slings and arrows of their outraged base, Tom's column could provide the basis for legislation that would go a long way to resolving the crisis on the border. I think that they would be surprised to find that Republicans would work with them.