Foreign Correspondent: June 23

This week on Foreign Correspondent “All the Single Men” on a gender imbalance in China and the steps some men will go to for a bride.

Being a single man in China is tough. Young men face pressure to provide a family heir but finding a bride isn’t easy. With 30 million more males than females, many bachelors are taking desperate measures to get hitched.

Lan Sui is 27 years old and still lives with his parents. He’s under pressure to start a family but in his home province of Henan, one of the poorest in China, there aren’t many young women available. Henan has one of the worst male to female ratios in the country.

In China, there’s a cultural preference for males. The saying here is that raising a girl is like cultivating someone else’s field because a girl moves into her husband’s family after marriage.

With technology now able to predict the sex of the baby in the womb, female fetuses are being aborted, leaving the country with millions more men than women.

Men from the ‘bachelor villages’ in Henan province are looking far and wide to find a wife. At a price, they can buy brides from Vietnam, Laos and even from as far as Indonesia.

The lack of women has also led to a local trafficking trade. We met Lui Bing who has been searching for his wife since she was kidnapped many years ago, leaving him alone to bring up their daughter.

While the police are trying to crack down on trafficking networks, the trade in local women continues.

All the Single Men explores the human and social impact of China’s female deficit, from the rise in the sale of sex dolls, to the loneliness of young men working in the city factories, to the desperation of men living in the rural areas.

Lan Sui’s family finally find a solution to their son’s problem, saving up enough money to buy a bride from Indonesia. While his family are happy, Lan Sui’s new bride Lai is uncertain about how she’ll fare in her new country.

Tuesday 23 June at 8pm on ABC.