普信男 (Puxinnan)
China’s widening gender gap, worsening demographics, some cultural differences, and an idea for increasing China's birth rate.
When describing themselves to the outside world, Jewish people like to say they are just like everyone else, but more so. Confucian culture people are similar in some ways. For example, everyone has more children when they are poor and their birth rates decline as they become wealthier but, compared to the rest of the world, Confucians have even more kids when they are poor and even fewer as they get wealthier. The lowest birthrates in the world now are South Koreans, Singaporean Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, and mainland Han Chinese.
South Korea faces the biggest challenge with a total fertility rate down to 0.70 and a stunning 0.50 in Seoul. Mathematically, there will be almost no South Koreans left within three generations. China is in a similarly precarious situation. China’s TFR is around 1.00 with marriages and births both down about half from ten years ago. Relaxing the one-child policy, paradoxically, led to a faster decline in births.
TRF also underestimates China’s baby bust. TFR is the average number of babies born to a woman over her lifetime. 2.1 is the natural replacement rate for society as a whole. In China’s case, selective abortions left China with around 30 million more men than women of child rearing age. The Economist estimates around 22.5m but that limits marriage age to a tight 14 year window. It is now a supply and demand problem. Too many men and not enough women. To throw salt on the wound. China gave away hundreds of thousands of girls to adoption, many to the US, exacerbating the female shortage.
To make matters worse, attitudes and realities changed in China, but the face issue remains. Women around the world tend to want to marry higher status men. This is even more pronounced in face sensitive China. Men tend to want to marry women that earn less than them. This is even more pronounced in China. As women are now the slight majority in terms of undergrad and grad degrees in China, the dichotomy is worsening. Chinese women want to marry up, but there are fewer eligible men. Chinese men want to marry down, but there are far fewer of these women. This is another big driver of falling marriages in China.
There are other problems. To reduce the number of divorces, China made divorce more difficult. Unfortunately, they didn’t anticipate the second order effect of fewer women wanting to go into marriages they just made harder to get out of. Another issue I heard from a successful but still single 40 year old women in China’s financial industry was that she (and many of her cohorts) didn’t want their children to have the miserable upbringing they had to go through, where constant studying and exam stress removed all the joys of youth. Another Chinese women in her thirties explained to me that children today were a luxury item. Perhaps the one-child policy’s cultural impact was even bigger than we imagined.
Bottom line, China faces severe cultural restraints in reversing its population decline, and culture is difficult to change.
Pu-Xin-Nan
The last time I was in China catching up with some old friends, one of the women commented that I was a typical pu-xin-nan. I asked her to write out pu-xin-nan. The three characters literally translates as ordinary-confidence-man and connotes an average man with unjustified self-confidence. A female Chinese comedian, during a stand-up routine, rhetorically asked, “why she was single for so long and that she simply couldn’t understand what is going on inside men’s pretty little heads in cases where they are clearly so mediocre and yet so self-confident”. The phrase Puxinnan went viral as it resonated with so many Chinese women. This struck me as a cultural difference between the East and West.
This issue is also one of many reasons China’s seen a large decline in marriages over the past ten years. It points to an underlying tension felt across many cultures today: women who are tired of the traditional patriarchy and men who feel superior simply due to their gender, and a male establishment that ignores their responsibility in causing the problem and too often feels that pushing women back into old fashioned roles is the key to restoring collapsing birthrates.
My friend was bewildered, however, that I didn’t take the Puxinnan comment as an insult. This contrasted with Chinese men who said this comedian insulted men and raised enough of a fuss to get two big companies to drop her from ad campaigns. In my case, I’m happy to admit I am mediocre, but I am also an incurable optimist. A trait I inherited, not from my father, but from my mother. I’m sympathetic to the fight for gender equality and could see how this phrase touched such a nerve in China, but I didn’t get offended because I see this idea of excess confidence through a different cultural lens.
As an American, I don’t mind the label ordinary or average. Judge me on my results more than my abilities. Plus, I believe confidence is a virtue regardless of gender. Lee Kwan Yew often praised America’s ‘can-do approach”. It is a Western idea with a long history. Virgil said over twenty centuries ago, “They conquer who believe they can.” Almost 80 years ago, Henry Ford remarked, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.” In many ways, Western thinking emphasizes confidence or faith over capabilities.
The serenity prayer, as popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous goes as follows:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference
Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame updated it talking to his stuffed tiger toy:
Calvin: Know what I pray for?
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can’t, and the incapacity to tell the difference.
As a (somewhat) modern American, I resonate with Calvin’s take.
The female Chinese comedian wasn’t criticizing confidence per se, but rather unjustified confidence. But even this is esteemed in the West. A recent manifestation of this concept is the current phrase “fake it till you make it”. That you need to play the hand you are dealt as well as possible and have confidence in your abilities even if you are still learning and not good enough yet. In American sports, the “irrational confidence guy”, can be a compliment because these players can perform under high pressure situations because they overestimate their abilities and don’t feel the stress normal players do.
A great example is Elon Musk and Tesla. In 2009, Charlie Munger, the legendary investor, was convinced Tesla would fail. Twelve years later, acknowledging he was wrong, and complimenting Elon Musk, Munger said, “Never underestimate the man who overestimates himself… Some of the extreme successes are going to come from people who try very extreme things because they’re overconfident.”
In fact, American criticism of excess confidence is more often internally generated as highlighted by the popular expression “imposter syndrome”, where people worry their success wasn’t deserved given their abilities. To my American sensibilities, a Puxin man or a Puxin woman are both positive if it encourages them to take more chances and embrace opportunities outside of their comfort zone.
China’s gender gap is getting troublingly large. China will have to figure out a solution consistent with their cultural history. I can’t help there. But, using good Chinese lateral logic and my unjustified over-confidence, I do have an idea on how they can increase their birthrate. A month-long blackout in villages in Zanzibar in 2008 led to a 20% increase in births. I’m not suggesting blackouts in China, but if they cut off the internet for three months, there would widespread complaints, but I bet there would also be a huge increase in dating, marriages, and pregnancies.