The New York Times today reported about Pakistan brides marrying Chinese grooms. Today's paper contained a story "She Thought She’d Married a Rich Chinese Farmer. She Hadn’t" reporting about how a Pakistani bride married a Chinese thinking that he might be rich farmer but discovering that he wasn't rich as he claimed to be.
This post will provide a discourse analysis of the news story.
The article rightly points out the skewed sex-rations by stating "China has one of the most heavily skewed gender ratios in the world, with 106.3 men for every 100 women as of 2017, according to the World Bank." The concept of "Bare branches" put forward by Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer in 2004 pointed to how societies having an excess of men find the "Governments sometimes respond(ing) to this problem by enlisting young surplus males in military campaigns and high-risk public works projects." While the threat of war being carried out by China to engage the excess men isn't evident, it does appear that the BRI seems to potentially that high-risk public works project that China has embarked upon.
This post will provide a discourse analysis of the news story.
The article rightly points out the skewed sex-rations by stating "China has one of the most heavily skewed gender ratios in the world, with 106.3 men for every 100 women as of 2017, according to the World Bank." The concept of "Bare branches" put forward by Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer in 2004 pointed to how societies having an excess of men find the "Governments sometimes respond(ing) to this problem by enlisting young surplus males in military campaigns and high-risk public works projects." While the threat of war being carried out by China to engage the excess men isn't evident, it does appear that the BRI seems to potentially that high-risk public works project that China has embarked upon.
It appears that the thesis of the authors of Bare Branches is becoming evident with many Chinese (especially men) being employed in the project. (I need to add some evidence here with numbers)
A problem with the generic statement about China - "At the same time, Ms. Kanwal’s story is not uncommon in China" is that it has attributed such a practice to China. The double negative used in the sentence is a way of masking their prejudice. For such a large population, almost 1.4 billion and more than four times the population of the United States, one can definitely expect such practices, but to then attribute it to the whole country, it is problematic. While the authors have contacted the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, it would have helped if the authors had focused on what steps the Chinese government is undertaking to prevent human trafficking. China has severe punishments for such crimes (need more detail) but one wonders whether severe punishments might be inadequate to prevent such practices.
At another place the reporters write - "Other men sought out wives from Pakistan’s Christian minority, many of whom are impoverished and subjected to discrimination, investigators said. But virtually all of the women, Christian and Muslim alike, were drawn by the hope of better economic prospects." This points out very well the underlying economic factors pushing some Pakistan women to seek grooms who have been affected by social policies in China.
Is this an example of potential 'win-win scenarios' under BRI?
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