Marriage Market Trends in Asia

We've all heard about how because of sex-selective abortions China will have a surplus of guys. People speculate about how that will lead to all sorts of future consequences, including violence caused by sexually-frustrated guys and the importation of brides from other countries.

The Economist reports here and here two additional facts of interest:
     (1) Divorce rates are actually starting to rise in some Asian countries (though not in China)
     (2) In some Asian countries, many women, especially more educated women, are not getting married or even co-habitating (though again, this is not true in China).

It will be interesting to see how these trends continue to evolve.

Will the Chinese innovate in politician image control?

Apparently a photo of the American ambassador to China buying coffee, on his own, at a Starbucks, without relying on a lackey to fetch it for him, is making waves in China. Apparently Chinese are used to their government officials living in luxury and so seeing the American ambassador living such a normal existence is a real eye opener. Adding further shock and awe are reports of Ambassador Locke carrying his own luggage at the Beijing airport. If these reports are really causing as big of a stir as the NYTimes suggests they are, it would be interesting to know what China does about it.

One fairly unique thing about Chinese government is that it actively uses experimentation to find effective new policies. It tries out a new policy in a few provinces, and then if those policies are successful, expands them to the country as a whole. For example, the creation of special economic zones--business parks where factories are encouraged to cluster--was the result of policy experimentation.

I wonder if China will try out any policy experiments to try to improve the image of Chinese officials to make them act more like Ambassador Locke. Unfortunately, unlike special economic zones that increase rents to government officials, such an image campaign, to really be legit, would decrease rents. So unless there is a significant threat of an uprising, such image-control policies are unlikely to be implemented any time soon.