Cloning's Killer App

More from that wickedly interesting Asian Demography Essay by Nicholas Eberstadt - Policy Review, No. 123

It does not seem wild, however, to propose that the emergence and rise of the phenomenon of the “unmarriageable male” may occasion an increase of social tensions in China — and perhaps social turbulence as well. Exactly how China’s future cohorts of young men are to be socialized with no prospect of settled family life and no tradition of honorable bachelorhood is a question that can be asked today, but not answered. (Questions may equally be raised, without any good answers, about the bearing of China’s rising and not necessarily celibate bachelor class on the risks of hiv transmission in the decades ahead.) And it is hard to see how Beijing will be able to mitigate China’s escalating “bride deficit” through any deliberate policy actions for at least a generation (unless of course Beijing stumbles upon a method of manufacturing full-grown Chinese women on demand).

Let's hope they don't look to the Ancient Roman Solution