Weekend Long Read: The Stubborn Urban-Rural Divide of ‘Leftover’ Men and Women

Perhaps the theory of the survival of the fittest can help to explain the opposite gender imbalance in rural and urban China. Aspirant males and females head to cities in search of better prospects; the latter, with the added aim of better marriage prospects, invariably outnumber the men. Of the males that stay or return, there is the heavy bride price to pay to win the hand of a lady among the smaller pool of women left in the rural areas. This modern malaise is something no provincial policy can easily solve, economist Li Jingkui says.