[rdslw]

Hard to believe this is something more than 'wannabe business PR' plus movie PR.

China female/male ratio is heavily unbalanced. There is a LOT men on market for women to choose. Also almost no foreign woman marry chinese man, on the contrary to the chinese women marrying a lot of foreigners.

1+2 means china is a market where men are at bad position and women has plenty of fish to choose from. Opposite situation which would create such services as described in the article.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China

According to 2012 figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s sex ratio at birth (the number of boys born for every 100 girls) was as high as 118.

[analyst74]

This is the logical conclusion if you don't understand another country and solely base your analysis on data.

All you said in regards to male/female ratio is true, and single women have lots potential mates to choose from.

Unfortunately, the mistress situation is still common, due to a variety of issues around limited supply of wealthy men, divorce laws favouring the wealthy, societal stigma against divorced people, social norm of judging men by success and women by look, etc, etc.

Not all those issues are female-centric, but combined, they make it acceptable (while still looked down upon, if advertised) for some women to be a mistress of some powerful man, and powerful men to have mistresses.

[ripitrust]

You are in fact very right, but there is one critical issue here. If we are talking about marriage. Culturally there is a "lifespan" of value to both genders. A Man's valuable lifespan can be well over 20 years, from age 20 all the way to age 40.While a woman's valuable lifespan maybe only less than 10 years, from 20 to 30.

This is because of the "stake" people are seeking when looking for a marriage between genders. Women are seeking wealth, social status, personality and whatever it may take to maintain a stable marriage ( family). While men, in most cases, are looking for prettiness, good-looking or whatever superficial. This kind of value lifespan and marriage purpose mismatch is the whole problem of marriage issues in China.

A divorced, less pretty (compare to those in 20s), mid-aged woman is very hard to find another marriage. Even if they did not even marry before, it is still hard for them. A lot of women in China who are well-educated, well-paid, in their 30s still have problems in finding partners (This is what Chinese society called sheng nu, or "women that left behind":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_nu).

Statistically speaking, women are indeed more than men, but the mating process is not statistic.

[cinquemb]

>Statistically speaking, women are indeed more than men, but the mating process is not statistic.

Now it would be fascinating if people could generate probability distributions that accurately describe social-economic systems/relationships like what I would say that you accurately describe quantitatively.

[srtjstjsj]

A well-educated, well-paid woman doesn't need to marry a wealthy man.

[Retric]

Cultures change. Changing gender imbalances are one of the driving forces of said change.

[iliketosleep]

it's not that simple. in china's current materialistic society you have a small pool of rich men with a lot of woman chasing after them. the majority of rich businessman do in fact have mistresses and their wives do take drastic measures to get them back.

[coldtea]

The culture of a place plays much more important role that mere ratios of men/women.

Besides, it's not like this is for the general population. Mistresses are a common trait in the upper classes -- which, in a huge place like China, are still in the tens of millions...

[kazinator]

> China female/male ratio is heavily unbalanced. There is a LOT men on market for women to choose.

The ratio of females to males that women actually want is balanced the other way. And it's that way pretty much everywhere in the world.

A f/m << 1 just means there are more men to settle for, not really to choose.

[hnchinatime]

I'm confused by this logic - what about women men actually want? Surely that should cancel out the other side.

[fhe]

while the skewed sex ratio is true, lumping all of China together is misleading. The sex ratio is quite balanced in cities, for example, meaning that women living in cities don't quite enjoy the advantage.

[rpgmaker]

>* Hard to believe this is something more than 'wannabe business PR' plus movie PR.*

By the way what is that movie's actual name? I haven't been able to find it on imdb, rotten tomatoes, etc.

[pavel_lishin]

According to the article, this is mostly men who are trying to status-signal by having a mistress; it's not Average Joe who's keeping a mistress on the side.

[roel_v]

Men are not fungible.

[Retric]

A man is not fungible, but 600,000,000 men are.

[roel_v]

Either a good is fungible or it isn't (well, a good has an elasticity, it's not binary of course), it doesn't depend on the supply. Consumer choices are a function of elasticity and location on the supply/demand curve (and many more things ofc, but that's not relevant for this point). In other words, supply nor demand are a component of fungibility.

[Retric]

Books, Music, Movies, TV, etc are all treated as fungible commodities due to the wide range of options. In much the same way that Meat and Coal have a wide range of quality and unique traits, but again the market has no problem dealing in bulk purchases.

Granted, this often breaks down such as with the last mortgage crash but no abstraction is actually true.

[roel_v]

What? No, nobody treats movies or music as fungible. Hence the extreme importance of A&R's, for example.

And when you buy beef in bulk, that doesn't mean that they'll send you whatever meat they have on hand, nor is that what 'fungible' even means.

[Retric]

Fungible is not some abstract ideal it's just a reference to how things are being treated.

Electronic money, Stock etc are defined as Fungible because two people can exchange tokens of ownership in the same thing without impacting anything. The same is 'said' about crude oil and other physical thing even though they are not actually identical they are treated as such.

However, the same effect happens when company's own huge set's of IP. That IP is treated as an income stream and money does not care about it's origin. The reverse even happens with money. Coins as collectors items are independent from there nominal value.

For a back and forth example. Two Kids might trade 1's because the Serial Numbers of one of the bills contain 666 which lowers the value to one and increases it to another. Later if the bill is spent it could go though a hundred transactions where nobody cares about the SN.

[hasenj]

But how many of these men are actually desirable by the women?

The services in the article cost upwards of $10k which means the woman in this case might be married to a rich high status man, which is arguably difficult to come by.

If you are a women age 28 married to a high status man for say six years, you probably want to keep that man instead of trying to find another one.

[hnchinatime]

How is that woman entitled to the status attached the man she married?

[hasenj]

I don't understand your objection.

The woman does not get a copy of the man's status.

She gets high status by marrying a high status man.

The wife of Donald Trump does not have to achieve anything to gain status. She gains status simply by being Trump's wife.

[srtjstjsj]

because he chose to marry her, which means they unite their status.