Earlier this year, a phrase went viral on Chinese social media. The phrase described a nightmarish scenario, in effect announcing the premature death of the century-old Chinese Dream.
The phrase “getting old before getting rich” was widely used in Chinese public discourse around 2023–2025 to describe China’s demographic and economic anxiety: the country is aging rapidly before it has reached the per capita income levels of developed nations.
While the problem is self-evident in the Chinese population and gender data, its origins are more than four decades old, and its unintended consequences are just beginning to manifest.
In the late 1970s, China brought in its one-child policy. The dictatorial policy that controlled the family life and fertility of a woman’s body had few parallels in history, and now stands as a classic example of the excesses of the 20th-century welfare and totalitarian states.
Strangely enough, the policy that was enforced upon the masses at the altar of economic development and prosperity is now cited as the biggest impediment to China’s further growth and prosperity.
Believe it or not, but if China today is standing at the cusp of aging before reaching the prosperity levels of developed nations, it is thanks to the ill-conceived and ill-planned one-child policy.
Apparently, this is just one of the many unintended consequences of the one-child policy. At the other extreme, it is also forcing young Chinese men to desperately look for brides among China’s poor neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
But first, let us look at the numbers that illustrate China’s unfolding demographic disaster.
China’s Demographic Disaster
The median age in China is already 40.2, comparable to that of developed countries. For instance, in the UK, the median age is 40.6. For the US, it’s 38.5.
However, according to the IMF, the UK’s average per capita income (USD 62,000) is more than twice that of China’s (USD 26,310).
The US’s per capita income (USD 89,105) is more than three times that of China’s.
Furthermore, China is set to get older in the coming years.
According to database.earth, China’s median age will be 42.9 by 2030, 48.6 by 2040, and 52.1 by 2050.
Realizing the folly of the one-child policy, China has now relaxed its rules, allowing couples to have two or even three children. However, this might already be too late.
The fertility rate in China is currently 1.1, around half of the replacement level (2.1). China’s fertility rate will hover around 1.1 until 2050, then show a marginal improvement, rising to 1.3 by 2070.
The average number of annual births is also falling. In 2010, China recorded 17.9 million new births; this figure dropped to 11.1 million by 2020, and will further drop to 8.3 million by 2030, 7.3 million by 2050, and 3 million by the end of this century.
Falling birth rates mean China’s population has already peaked and will continue to decline.
According to the database.earth, China’s current population of around 1.42 billion will decline to 1.26 billion by 2050, and to 633 million by 2100.
An aging society and declining population mean that fewer and fewer people will have to support an increasing number of older (non-working) people.
China officially ended the one-child policy in 2015 and is now initiating various programs to encourage people to have more children.
Many developed countries are struggling with this challenge and offer financial support, workplace equality, and nursery facilities to encourage people to have more children.
However, China faces a unique challenge: the imbalance between the number of men and women of the childbearing age bracket. This, too, is the indirect consequence of the One Child policy.
The deadly cocktail of a profoundly patriarchal society and the freedom to have just one child led to widespread abortion of female foetuses.
This gender imbalance means that for millions of young men in China, falling in the childbearing age bracket, there are simply no women to get married to.
In China, there is a term for these men. They are called China’s ‘leftover men’.
China’s Millions Of “Leftover Men”
By China’s own admission, there is a surplus of around 35 million men in the country. This gender imbalance is most acute among the current generation. However, the situation will not improve for at least another two decades.
After two decades, while the situation will somewhat improve, the gender imbalance at birth will persist in the future as well.
According to the UN World Population Prospects 2024, there are 44.4 million men in the 25-29 age group, but only 38.4 million women.
The gap in absolute terms diminishes across subsequent cohorts but remains significant.
The data shows that in every age group, there are millions more men than women. This gender imbalance means that China’s efforts to encourage people to have more children will face an additional obstacle.
For millions of ‘leftover Chinese men,’ there are not enough women in China to get married. As a result, increasingly millions of Chinese men are now looking beyond China’s borders to find a bride.
Pakistan And Bangladesh: Bride Marketplace For ‘Leftover Chinese Men’
In this international search for a bride, countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh top the list for many reasons: they are close to China, on friendly terms with Beijing, and much poorer.
Consequently, Pakistan and Bangladesh are fast emerging as a bride marketplace for leftover Chinese men.
However, sensing an opportunity, many middlemen have entered the circuit, who are exploiting vulnerable women and are selling them as prostitutes by promising them marriage with rich Chinese men.
Even if the marriage is genuine, the women face many issues. Often, they can not speak or read Chinese. There is a vast cultural gap between Pakistan and China.
Suddenly, these young women from Pakistan and Bangladesh find themselves in an alien country, surrounded by strangers, and unable to communicate due to the language barrier.
Cross-border marriages between Pakistan and China first drew widespread attention in early 2019, when Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) announced it had dismantled a suspected prostitution ring that was trafficking young Pakistani women to China.
Later that year, an Associated Press investigation, drawing on Pakistani authorities’ findings, revealed more than 600 cases of women and girls who had married Chinese men through these networks; many were reportedly deceived and subsequently forced into prostitution.
Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency also arrested and charged 52 Chinese traffickers. However, within months, most of these people were discharged.
Such cases of Chinese bride trafficking are not confined to Pakistan: the practice has been documented in Laos, North Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Cambodia as well.
However, the problem seems to be more widespread in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
According to a 2022 Brookings Institution paper, Pakistan’s close relationship with China and the economic imperative of attracting investment from Beijing have ensured that the Pakistani state has, in effect, turned a blind eye to the problem.
“What made the Pakistani case different from the other contexts where such trafficking took place was the initial government and media attention to the issue, and how it was brushed under the rug soon after,” the paper said.
“Explaining it are two offsetting imperatives: first, the deeply disturbing nature of the crime for Pakistani society, given Pakistan’s cultural emphasis on protecting women’s “honor” — which explained the attention to the issue.”
“The second imperative — which ultimately won out, and led to attention to the issue being stamped out — was the need to protect Pakistan’s exceedingly close relationship, economic and otherwise, with China, given the lopsided power dynamic between the two countries.”
Despite the media attention, the practice has continued.
Earlier in May this year, the Chinese Embassy in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka warned its citizens against marrying local women to avoid being scammed by criminal gangs who sell women under the pretext of marriage.
Reporting from Pakistan, Betsy Joles recorded how the minority Christian women in Pakistan see the prospect of marrying a wealthy Chinese man as a means of escaping poverty and religious persecution in Pakistan.
She also recorded how some Pakistani women have married more than once to get paid twice, since the marriage essentially involves the bride purchasing.
It remains to be seen how governments will respond to these emerging practices and what protection will be offered to these women, who are either deceived or trafficked, or even otherwise, find themselves totally isolated in a strange country.
