When the Chinese Communist party proclaimed the “one-child policy” – a rational, socialist measure to check population growth – they didn’t take into account the ancient ingrained belief of the peasant masses that a male child is always preferable to a female child, resulting in decades of selective abortion of female fetuses.
In other words, when it came to cultural revolution and “re-education” of the masses, the tabulas of the people were not, apparently, entirely rasa. The old beliefs grew out of the experiences of thousands of years of hard living. Today there are something like 35 million more men in China than women.
All that testosterone boiling away with no place to go, together with the pressures of a burgeoning economy and a lack of raw materials, is a bit of a worry. "Make Love not War", says the old slogan. But when there's no one at home to "love" ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6962650.stm