China’s Education Ministry issued a notice last week warning that a troubling number of young men in the country have become too “feminine” and called on schools to begin “cultivating students’ masculinity.”
The initiative called the “Proposal to Prevent the Feminization of Male Adolescents,” urged schools to tap former athletes to serve as role models for these students. President Xi Jinping is a known soccer fan, the BBC reported.
The report said the proposal may not have been a complete surprise because a Chinese delegate warned in May that many young men in the country have grown “weak, timid, and self-abasing.”
The New York Times reported the ministry wants educators to focus on the “spirit of yang,” which is seen as a masculine attribute. The paper said the proposal was vague and had no clearly-stated goal or timeline.
The paper pointed to a social media post inside the country that could be an example of the underlining message in the new initiative. “It’s hard to imagine such effeminate boys can’t defend their country when outside invasion looms.”
The paper said that the Chinese have expressed recent interest in seeing to it their young men take to masculine pursuits. Young boys have been sent to boot camps that focus on manly development. Some in the government blame pop stars and single-mother households for the trend toward feminization.
The Chinese boy band TFBoys has raised concern in the country. The pop stars are seen by many as feminine, thus a bad influence on the country’s young men. News.com.au reported that journalists on state media questioned male celebrities in the country who wear makeup.
The BBC reported that reception to the proposal in China has been cold, and many called the message blatantly sexist.
“There are 70 million more men than women in this country,” one Weibo user posted, according to the network. “No country in the world has such a deformed sex ratio. Isn’t that masculine enough?”
(China has a population of 715 million males and 685 million females, amounting to about 1.4 billion people, according to Statista.com.)
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We have been reporting on how, from Beijing to Hong Kong, the government’s focus on influencing young minds to embrace the teachings of nationalism has intensified.
Indeed, one of our Top Trends for 2021 was that the 21st century will be the “Chinese century.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s goal has been to achieve the “Chinese Dream” of national rejuvenation. Xi’s goal was to “mobilize all the sons and daughters of (ethnic Chinese) to work together for the greater national interests and the realization of the Chinese Dream” – to be the world’s top power.
Xi understands to achieve that he needs a military that can intimidate and is ready to fight. We’ve already seen the trend with Beijing’s increasing tensions over the Taiwan Strait when just three days after Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States, the Chinese air force simulated a missile attack on a U.S. aircraft carrier, the Theodore Roosevelt, while also breaching Taiwan’s airspace.
While we do not forecast that China will soon invade Taiwan, which it has long regarded as its territory, it will continue to exert power to eventually take it over.
In March 2019, when demonstrations broke out in Hong Kong, considered a self-ruled city under the “one country, two system” deal it had cut with the U.K. when they returned their “colony” to Beijing, we had forecast protests would be halted, and it would become a one-system Chinese city… and it has.
Should China aggressively confront Taiwan, the U.S. and its NATO ally’s words will speak louder than their actions.
As we have noted, is that the U.S. has not won a war since World War II (and did so in part with the assistance of Russia), the Pentagon is well aware that war with China would be catastrophic, considering the size and power of China’s military.
