The position of women in Chinese society has improved tremendously over the past half century.
In imperial China, women had few rights, and rich men could acquire as many wives as they desired. Unlike in the West, there were no religious restrictions against a man having many wives.
Young women were frequently not asked when they were married off by families to men they may not even have seen before.
In imperial China, men had it their way with women. In China today, it is much more the women who make the rules. Men cannot just go and buy a wife from her parents. A man has to convince a woman that she should become his wife. Women in China now will not marry a man if there is no love between the two.
Love is not established in a matter of a few days of courtship. It requires that a man and a woman know each other over some time. For love to flourish, a woman has to experience a boyfriend's attitudes in different situations and different phases of development. And a man has to proof that he is kind and serious, otherwise he cannot win over the heart of the woman he wants to become his wife.
If we compare this to the Islamic world, we see that Chinese women have it better.
In the Islamic world, girls and young women are still just married off to men their fathers decide on. Young women and their husbands-to-be are not allowed to first be girlfriends and boyfriends to get to know each other before marriage. They often have talked very little to each other before they have their first sex. There impossibly can be true love on the part of the woman.
Of course, there also is no true love on the part of the man. But for the man, this is probably not so important. For a man, it is easy to initiate a sexual relationship with a woman, even though there is no love, and a man usually can find sexual satisfaction without romantic feelings. By contrast, a woman will get very little sexual excitement out off being used by a man whom she has been married to without really knowing him. It is an entirely wrong start into her sexual life.
And it doesn't get much better.
Women that are married off to men they hardly know, typically will get pregnant after just a few weeks. When they are pregnant, and even more so after having given birth to children, their concerns are not so much whether their relationships are sexually satisfying to them. Instead, they have to cope with feeling sick from their pregnancies, and after giving birth, they are busy taking care of their children. Female sexual satisfaction does not fit into the picture.
The psychology of women is different from that of men in that sexual excitement and sexual satisfaction need much more time.
As mentioned above, men typically can have satisfying sex with women they hardly know.
Women are diffferent. For women to derive proper pleasure out of sexual intercourse with a man, she will have to be familiar with him, and this will take some time. First, she will have to find him pleasant, then develop a liking for him, then feel romantically attached to him. Only then will she be mentally prepared to enjoy sexual conduct with him, and be physically ready for the greatest pleasure of all: orgasm.
Young women in China today can and will demand high qualifications from the men they accept as boyfriends and husbands.
And not just professional qualifications. A man to be accepted as boyfriend or husband must have a qualified appearance and a qualified character.
Young Chinese women today no longer will just marry any man for the sake of just being married. Women in China today can afford to wait. Because modern China treats women equal to men in the country's workforce, women in China now no longer have to get married solely for the purpose of having an economic base for their daily lives. They very well can earn their own money.
Women in modern China will marry only if they love the man whom they are going to marry. And if they cannot find the right man, then staying unmarried is still the better option then having to become the servant and maid of a an ugly and abusive man who treats his wife like an animal.
Now, while women in modern China have come a long way claiming their right to a love-based lifelong marriage with an attractive and attentive man, there still is a problem to overcome.
The number of Chinese men who conform to the requirements of young modern women to qualify as boyfriends or husbands is too small.
Who wants to marry a construction worker who has no own home, and not even a residence certificate for the city where he works? Or who wants a farmer who is looking for a wife not just to have a sexual outlet but also to burden her with plenty of work? These are no good options, and in modern China, women cannot be forced to agree to such poor choices.
Too many Chinese men do not pay ennough attention to their own physical attractiveness. All men desire beautiful women. So why do so few men understand the aesthetic wishes of women?
Middle-age Chinese men who are financially secure and physically attractive usually already have a wife (though they may be looking for mistresses).
And a problem with those young men who would qualify (good looking, good education, good income) is this: many young Chinese women would accept them as boyfriend and husband to be. So there is a definite risk that a young woman loses him to a female competitor.
From the perspective of young Chinese women, there are too few good men.
As a solution, more Chinese women should consider marrying rich foreigners. There are several advantages to this option.
One advantage is that a Chinese woman will not have to fear much competition from the compatriot females of a foreign husband, as Chinese women are more beautiful and will preserve their beauty for a much longer time.
Furthermore, when living in the Western husband's country, they are so much an attraction that a foreign husband will likely be much more careful not to lose his Chinese wife than Chinese husband in China.
Chinese husbands in China are well aware that their wives fear endangering their marriage, especially once the couple has a child.
Because Chinese husbands do not have to fear that their wives will desert them lightly (because a Chinese woman in China will experience an enormous drop in sexual market value once divorced with a child), some Chinese husbands change tremendously, when compared to the times the two were boyfriend and girlfriend.
They will burden their wives with more and more work, and often will search for other women to have sexual relationships with. And sometimes they will not even care if the wives find out.
By contrast, in Europe and America, husbands could not afford such a behavior as wives would file for a divorce more quickly. Therefore, Western husbands would not risk treating their wives, whether Western or Chinese, as carelessly as some Chinese husbands do.
Furthermore, a Chinese wife living with a foreign husband in the country of her husband will likely generate much more attention among the compatriot males of her husband, than she would in China. Other men may fall in love with her even though she is married.
I do not want to advise Chinese wives of foreign husbands who live in Europe or America to have extramarital affairs. But I do want to mention that European or American men are much more likely to try a love affair with the beautiful wife of another man than are Chinese men.
Actually, a large number of women from the Philippine (a country which has a much longer tradition of women migrating to Europe or America as the spouses of European or American men) have married Western men below their own sexual market value, simply for a chance to migrate to Europe or America. Once they have obtained residence status in Europe or America, they ditched their initial husbands and found younger, more attractive, and richer husbands or boyfriends.
While such behavior may be atypical for loyalty-emphasizing Chinese wives, it clearly illustrates that any Chinese woman who is migrating to Europe or America can expect a clear rise of her sexual market value. For example, if she is below the Chinese average for beauty and youthful appearance, she will nevertheless be considered among the most beautiful women in any European or American environment.
Chinese women should also be aware that in Europe or America (when compared to China), it matters much less if a woman has been previously married and is divorced, and even has children.
In China, all men want to marry a virgin. And if they cannot have a virgin, the woman at least should not have been married previously, and certainly, she should not have children from another man. If she has, her sexual market value declines tremendously.
In Europe and America, no man expects to marry a virgin. It is considered normal that a girl loses her virginity as a teenager, usually before she reaches the age of 18, to a boyfriend approximately her own age. It is not expected that the two will get married. Even the girl's parents expect that a teenage daughter will sleep with a teenage boyfriend, and the parents would almost always advise her daughter against a marriage with that boy.
European and American men from their early 20s will not expect to ever again have a sexual relationship with a virgin, and men from their mid-30s onwards will not expect to ever again have a sexual relationship with a woman who is not yet a mother.
In China, the sexual market value of a woman who is divorced or has a child will decline rapidly. Chinese men with a high sexual market value will simply not consider marrying a woman who is divorced and has a child from another man.
So, for a Chinese woman, whether she is still single without children, or whether she is divorced, with or without child, it can make very good sense to enter a marriage or permanent relationship with a Western man.
Because many Chinese women have a poor understanding of European social and legal systems, I want to stress that in Europe, marriages always have a religious taint. Getting married also feels very old-fashioned to many modern European men (America is more conservative in that respect).
So, in Europe, many men and women of a high sexual market value, and even those in high public positions will have lifelong sexual relationships without gettiing married, simply because getting married would feel too old-fashioned and too religious.
Anyway, what counts for legal rights in Europe is not so much whether a man and a woman are married but whether they have a child or children together.
To give an example: if a Chinese woman marries a European man, she does not automatically have the right to live in Eurpe. Her Western husband can apply for it, and then it will usually be granted. But if the two shall split after some time, with a formal divorce or not, the Chinese wife has no chance to obtain a residence permit for Europe on her own.
But if a Chinese woman has a child with a European man, whether the Chinese woman and the European man are married or not, then the Chinese woman will have the legal right to live in Europe all her life, even if the European father of their child disappears after a short while, and even if the European father of her child never takes her to Europe herself.
