Earlier this year, a phrase ricocheted across Chinese social media platforms, encapsulating a fear that has long simmered beneath the surface of the country’s economic narrative. The phrase — “getting old before getting rich” — captured, with chilling clarity, a widening national anxiety: China is aging rapidly but has yet to attain the per capita wealth of developed nations.
First popularised around 2023–2025, the phrase signaled a new demographic pessimism. While China has undeniably grown into the world’s second-largest economy, its per capita prosperity remains far below that of the West. Now, its population is aging faster than its economic and social systems can adapt — a trend rooted in a policy decision taken more than four decades ago.
The origins of China’s demographic predicament lie in the late 1970s, when Chinese authorities introduced the one-child policy — one of the most intrusive social engineering experiments in modern history. Enforced ruthlessly for more than 35 years, the policy restricted millions of families to a single child and brought unprecedented state control into the private lives of women.
Strikingly, the policy implemented to accelerate prosperity is now widely regarded within China as the single biggest obstacle to achieving it. Demographers argue that China’s looming demographic decline — shrinking population, aging society, skewed gender ratios — is an unintended consequence of this policy.
Even more striking is the irony that China now faces a crisis forecast decades ago but never confronted seriously until it was too late.
Today, China’s median age stands at 40.2 — comparable to that of many advanced countries. The UK’s median age is 40.6 and the US’s is 38.5. But the similarities end there.
The UK’s average per capita income is about USD 62,000; China’s is less than half, at USD 26,310. The US, with a per capita income of USD 89,105, is more than three times wealthier per person than China.
Despite this gulf in prosperity, China is aging much faster.
Projections from database.earth show that China’s median age will rise to 42.9 by 2030, 48.6 by 2040, and an astonishing 52.1 by 2050 — levels rarely seen globally.
The fertility rate, too, tells a grim story. China’s current fertility rate is 1.1 — barely half the replacement rate of 2.1. The rate is expected to stay around 1.1 until mid-century, with a slight uptick to 1.3 only by 2070.
Birth data highlight the downward spiral:
2010: 17.9 million births
2020: 11.1 million
2030 (projected): 8.3 million
2050 (projected): 7.3 million
2100 (projected): 3 million
China’s population has already peaked. From its current estimated 1.42 billion, it is projected to fall to 1.26 billion by 2050, and to just 633 million by 2100 — less than half its present size.
This means a shrinking workforce will have to support a rapidly growing elderly population, intensifying fiscal pressures and threatening China’s long-term growth prospects.
China ended the one-child policy in 2015, replacing it with first a two-child policy and then allowing three children per family. Yet young couples are reluctant. High living costs, long working hours, and weak social protections discourage childbearing.
But a deeper structural barrier exists: a massive gender imbalance.
Decades of son preference, combined with the one-child limit, led to widespread sex-selective abortions — a reality openly acknowledged by Chinese authorities today. As a result, millions more men than women now exist in the childbearing age bracket.
China refers to these men as “leftover men.” By official estimates, China has around 35 million more men than women — a gap so large it will take decades to correct.
The United Nations World Population Prospects 2024 highlights the imbalance starkly:
Among people aged 25–29:
Men: 44.4 million
Women: 38.4 million
Across almost every cohort, men significantly outnumber women. Even two decades from now, the imbalance will ease but not disappear.
This means that even if China successfully incentivises childbirth, millions of men will still struggle to find partners — placing a hard demographic limit on recovery.
China’s ‘Leftover Men’ Look Abroad for Brides
Faced with the demographic reality that there are simply not enough Chinese women to marry, millions of Chinese men are now looking across borders for potential wives. For many, Pakistan and Bangladesh have become favoured destinations.
The reasons are pragmatic: these countries are geographically close, maintain warm relations with China, and are significantly poorer — making cross-border marriages economically enticing for local families.
But the growing demand has fed a dark underbelly.
With thousands of Chinese men seeking brides abroad, a network of middlemen has emerged — in many cases exploiting vulnerable women in South Asia. Many are promised stability and a better future in China, only to be trafficked into prostitution or forced marriages.
Concerns first erupted in Pakistan in early 2019, when the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said it had dismantled a trafficking ring that sent Pakistani women to China under the guise of marriage.
Later that year, an Associated Press investigation found over 600 cases where women and girls had married Chinese men through such networks — many later forced into prostitution or trapped in abusive households.
Although Pakistani authorities arrested 52 Chinese nationals involved, most were released within months. No systemic crackdown followed.
The trafficking networks are not limited to Pakistan. Similar cases have surfaced in:
Laos
Vietnam
Myanmar
Cambodia
Bangladesh
North Korea
But the phenomenon is particularly pronounced in Pakistan and Bangladesh due to economic vulnerabilities and political sensitivities.
A 2022 Brookings Institution study argued that Pakistan’s dependence on Chinese investment — especially under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) — has resulted in the state turning a blind eye to bride trafficking.
The paper observed that while Pakistani media initially reported the issue vigorously, coverage soon faded, and official efforts to pursue the traffickers stalled.
“Protecting Pakistan’s exceedingly close relationship with China” ultimately overshadowed the need to safeguard vulnerable women, the researchers concluded.
The Chinese government, too, has issued warnings. In May this year, the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka advised citizens against marrying Bangladeshi women to avoid scams — a sign of the rising number of cross-border marital frauds.
Journalists reporting from Pakistan have noted that minority Christian women, often facing severe poverty and discrimination, view the prospect of marrying a Chinese man — portrayed as wealthy and stable — as a path to a better life.
Some cases are transactional: women marry twice to collect money from brokers, treating the marriage as a paid arrangement.
Yet many others end up isolated in China, unable to speak Mandarin, cut off from family, and vulnerable to abuse.
China’s demographic crisis is no longer a forecast — it is unfolding in real time. The combination of aging, shrinking population, and gender imbalance will shape China’s social fabric and economic future for decades.
Meanwhile, the surge in cross-border marriages — some consensual, others exploitative — highlights a regional crisis that governments have yet to fully confront.
Whether Beijing, Islamabad, and Dhaka take meaningful steps to monitor, regulate, and protect women remains to be seen. But for now, the millions of “leftover men” in China and the vulnerable women in South Asia remain entangled in a demographic problem that began with a policy decision made nearly half a century ago — one whose repercussions span continents.
