Of the many monumental challenges China will confront in the coming years, one of the more overlooked is the country’s overwhelming gender imbalance. Due to a lethal combination of cultural, economic and political factors, Chinese men are set to outnumber women by the tens of millions. This is already having effects on everything from the real estate market to national stability.

For today’s podcast, we’ve invited Mara Hvistendahl, author of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men. She tells us how China came to have the world’s most skewed gender demograhpics and what implications that might have for the country’s future.

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Links:

Paul Ehrlich – The Population Bomb

China Bounder Blog – Sex in Shanghai

Valerie M. Hudson & Andrea M. den Boer – Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population