Several readers have noted that my comment in today’s column about neither the USA nor China having enough of a young-guy surplus to get into serious war-fighting excludes the fact that China has a male surplus, owing to widespread female infanticide. On which I note the following:

—Chinese men have always been short of mates. In the past, in fact, it was worse: not only was female infanticide always common, but prior to 1950, so was polygamy. (Which, of course, reduces marriage opportunities for low-status males.) This is why “bride price” is such an established custom in backward parts of China, still today. If a man wants a wife, he has to PAY — often very large amounts of money. There was an unhappy little echo of this in the “old bachelor” culture of American Chinatowns, of which much still remained when I first visited New York’s Chinatown in 1973.

None of this led to testosterone-charged Chinese males marching abroad bent on conquest. I don’t expect it to in future.

—The demographic math of societies with shortages of females like this is interesting. The results are never as dire as you would think. The shortages vary by age cohort, for example; so if there aren’t enough women in your own age cohort, you explore others. (In pre-industrial societies this drove down the age at which women were acceptable as brides — often down below the teens. I don’t have any data on whether this applies to modern societes, though.)

—China may indeed have a surplus of young males, but because of the one-child policy (which is anyway driving the process), EVERY ONE OF THEM IS SOME FAMILY’S “LITTLE EMPEROR.” Mom and Dad are not going to be happy seeing their only son — and, in a non-welfare state, their main hope for old-age support — go off to get killed fighting the Yanks.

—Presumably there is a hysteresis curve here somewhere — I mean, there will be a “market correction” if women become scarce enough. We then proceed to my second point above…