- China crisis - 15th July 2026
- Burned out again - 14th July 2026
- Broken - 13th July 2026
During 42 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon) for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, it has always been paramount to keep up with societal changes, such as attitudes towards women – but new evidence today appears to show that this isn’t happening in one country: China.
It isn’t easy for some groups of people in our society.
They can face prejudice, discrimination, and barriers to progress at work, so as a journalist you must be aware of all these things.
In other countries, however, it is even worse.
Let’s take the example of women in China.
Ostensibly there is absolute equality in this country (Mao Zedong famously said that “women hold up half the sky”), but the reality there is rather different.
The Communist Youth League (CYL) has said “extreme feminism” (which it does not define, but generally includes anything that encourages activism or conflict, yet discourages women from getting married and having children), is a “cancer”, with the party regularly casting feminism as a destabilising, insidious foreign force.
Under President Xi Jinping, “sissy men” have been banned from appearing on television, while traditional marriage and childrearing have been promoted.
It seems that “gender antagonism” may be setting the scene for broader social instability, and officials are even more worried about this so they have toned down their rhetoric a little recently.
They also worry hugely about plunging marriage and birth rates, because in the first quarter of this year China registered just 1.7 million marriages, half the number compared with the same period in 2017.
It is severely affected, too, by its former one-child policy, which seems to have fuelled discrimination (both unofficial and official) against women, because fewer and fewer men can secure a female partner (let alone a male one – prejudice against gay people in China is appalling!), and rather than blame the practice itself, say that WOMEN are responsible.
The one-child policy led to the abortion of many female foetuses and thus a surplus of adult males today, many of whom struggle to couple up, and the number of surplus men, known as ‘guanggun’, or bare branches, is enormous.
By 2027 there will be 22.5 million more marriage-age men than women, which translates into 119 men of marriage age for every 100 women of that age; in 2012 the ratio was 105 to 100.
This is bad for the authorities, but it is almost as bad for journalists like me, if they don’t keep up with what’s happening!
Truths like these by Phil, who was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
