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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses– Screw That, Send Us Your Women

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses– Screw That, Send Us Your Women

by John Cole|  February 15, 20083:01 pm| 48 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs

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This is the weirdest story I have seen in a long time:

Amid a discussion of trade in 1973, Chinese leader Mao Zedong made what U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called a novel proposition: sending tens of thousands, even 10 million, Chinese women to the United States.

“You know, China is a very poor country,” Mao said, according to a document released by the State Department’s historian office.

“We don’t have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands.”

A few minutes later, Mao circled back to the offer. “Do you want our Chinese women?” he asked. “We can give you 10 million.”

“How much for the little girl? How much for the women?”

A truly bizarre offer. As a side note, I wonder what America would look like if we had an influx of ten million Asian women of child-bearing age several decades ago? Would it have changed marital structures and the culture, with that many available women? Would it have hastened the advances of the women’s rights movement? It would seem something like that would have a dramatic impact on society (much like what happened in Europe during the Great Wars when populations of young men were killed).

(via Memeorandum)

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Reader Interactions

48Comments

  1. 1.

    Don

    February 15, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    Plan 9 from the United States:

    “America. Needs. Women.”

  2. 2.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    February 15, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Filst!

  3. 3.

    Fecapult

    February 15, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    As a side note, I wonder what America would look like if we had an influx of ten million Asian women of child-bearing age several decades ago?

    It would look amazing!!!!!

  4. 4.

    Ed Drone

    February 15, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    What struck me was the almost plaintive plea in Mao’s talk — too many women, too many children, and a poor country. If his solution to their economic problems hadn’t been so skewed, his need to curb the Chinese birthrate might have actually been a source for cooperation between East and West. Not that the US at that time would have gladly taken in so many foreigners (look at how we’ve opened the floodgates to the Iraqi refugees we’ve created), but it might have been a starting point, and certainly would have changed history.

    But the two participants were Mao and Kissinger, and that, more even than global politics and ideology, though it’s hard to conceive of separating those two men from either politics or ideology, now that I think of it, probably put paid to the idea.

    But it would have been interesting. Sort of makes ping-pong diplomacy sort of a game, doesn’t it?

    Ed

  5. 5.

    Dennis - SGMM

    February 15, 2008 at 3:15 pm

    As a side note, I wonder what America would look like if we had an influx of ten million Asian women of child-bearing age several decades ago?

    It would look just like Alhambra, California any day of the week.

  6. 6.

    Jen

    February 15, 2008 at 3:16 pm

    I have never understood this. I read somewhere that Chinese farmers had to import wives from places like Burma because rural men outnumber women so much, thanks to reasons we’re all familiar with. How does it come to pass that they think an imbalance of the sexes is healthy, are they trying to create Big Love in reverse?

  7. 7.

    Punchy

    February 15, 2008 at 3:16 pm

    I wonder what America would look like if we had an influx of ten million Asian women of child-bearing age several decades ago?

    Let’s pontificate on this:

    1) We’d be whooping more math and science ass around the globe than one can imagine

    2) Stray dogs would be in fewer supply

    3) Lou Dobbs’ head would have exploded, like, 20 times over by now

    4) Reagan would have build a fence on the coast of California

    5) Take Malkin and multiply by at least 50. With 10 million Asian chicks, there’s bound to be at least 50 Asian racist bitchthugs in that lot who are telegenic.

    6) Cole’d be married by now.

  8. 8.

    srv

    February 15, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    Think of the army we could have trained and sent back home to do all those things. As Mao said…

  9. 9.

    4tehlulz

    February 15, 2008 at 3:19 pm

    I’m surprised Kissinger didn’t just ask Mao to send the women to his house.

  10. 10.

    Zifnab

    February 15, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    How does it come to pass that they think an imbalance of the sexes is healthy, are they trying to create Big Love in reverse?

    Men are simply worth more than women in Chinese culture. They can do more manual labor. Women are just extra mouths to feed that occasionally get pregnant and create more mouths to feed. That’s really the beginning and the end of it. The Chinese in 1950 valued the ability to lift heavy objects, period. Men did that better than women, so they preferred men over women. They didn’t have much time or compassion for the disabled either, if it makes you feel any better.

  11. 11.

    Zifnab

    February 15, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    6) Cole’d be married by now.

    Ok, slow down… let’s at least pretend to stay realistic.

  12. 12.

    zsa

    February 15, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    10 million single Asian women suddenly added to the US population in the mid-to-late 70s? I would have been very much in favor of that plan.

    It’s ironic that China is now running a negative trade deficit in women. China’s two main imports are Vietnamese women and American dollars.

  13. 13.

    Jen

    February 15, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    Well, I certainly understand sexism, Zif, I’m just approaching this pragmatically. If you’ve got land you need to farm, a wife helps you farm it and gives you kids who help you farm it, don’t they? These are more what I’m talking about…

  14. 14.

    Don

    February 15, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    Not quite in the millions but we’re bringing in Chinese girl babies at a pretty significant rate…

  15. 15.

    Digital Amish

    February 15, 2008 at 3:38 pm

    It would look amazing!!

    Right on. I’m thinking of the French/Indo-Chinese women of SE Asia. I remember reading somewhere that in 100 years America will look like Solidad Obrien (sp?) from CNN. Just annecdotal evidence but picking up my grandkids from school reveals alot more undeterminate race kids than when I picked my kids up 20 yrs. ago. And an order of magnitude more than when I went to school 20 yrs. before that.
    It’s a good thing.

  16. 16.

    Zifnab

    February 15, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    Well, I certainly understand sexism, Zif, I’m just approaching this pragmatically. If you’ve got land you need to farm, a wife helps you farm it and gives you kids who help you farm it, don’t they?

    Which explains why the Chinese are still importing women. But for the twelve to fourteen years between being a fetus and being a breeder, who wants to carry that burden? Nuts to that.

  17. 17.

    Mithras

    February 15, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    I believe that around the same time Mao was telling the Russians that China and Russia should launch a nuclear war against the United States to rid the world of capitalism forever, and that hundreds of millions of dead people was an acceptable price.

  18. 18.

    Digital Amish

    February 15, 2008 at 3:56 pm

    I suppose I should ammend that to “look like Solidad Obrien (sp?) from CNN if she weighed 207 lbs.”

  19. 19.

    TheFountainHead

    February 15, 2008 at 3:57 pm

    As a side note, I wonder what America would look like if we had an influx of ten million Asian women of child-bearing age several decades ago?

    Living in Southeast Asia as I did for a brief time, I spent a lot of idle time studying the different characteristics and traits (physical and non-physical) of the myriad ethnicities over there, and I became pretty good at telling them all apart at first glance, though it’s pretty damn hard if not near impossible in some cases. The northern Thai and most Cambodians, for example, are indistinguishable the way a person from California is indistinguishable from a person in Nevada. Today, whenever I see children of mixed heritage and I don’t have a flippin’ clue as to what ethnicities they descend from, it gives me hope that some day a good deal of the prejudices our world suffers from will be washed away in the genetic blending.

  20. 20.

    Krista

    February 15, 2008 at 3:58 pm

    Yeah, I think it’s a pretty good sign in our society when people of mixed ethnicities have moved beyond being scorned, to being accepted, to being considered teh hawt. (Exhibit A: Jessica Alba. Exhibit B: your-hopefully-soon-to-be-prez.) It is interesting to think what America would have been like, had Mao’s offer been accepted. Not so much physically — but I wondering what you guys would have been like socially. Your overall philosophies, the attitudes that shape your culture…

    If nothing else, it makes for a fun parlour game to try to imagine how things would have been different.

  21. 21.

    SpotWeld

    February 15, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    Okay.. now this is an idea I want to see Harry Turtledove work with somehow.

    Imagine if a huge percentage were taken in by the Mormons of Utah. Or used as a form of incredibly cheap (and gov’t backed?) labor to “revitalize” the American auto industry of the late 70s. Or somehow cuased the US aricultural industry to rebaance corn production with rice…

    The mind boggles.

  22. 22.

    Tsulagi

    February 15, 2008 at 4:19 pm

    Punchy, that was a pretty good list. I’ll add one…

    7) Terrorism wouldn’t have taken root. 72 imaginary virgins in the sky doesn’t equal a shot at 10 million real ones on the ground. Dumb fucks who blow themselves up hoping to finally get laid would have been waving little American flags trying to get in here.

    Was there a time cutoff on Mao’s offer?

  23. 23.

    zsa

    February 15, 2008 at 4:24 pm

    My kids are part Asian, part European, part Arab, and apparently part Martian. I’m pretty lucky – they have my wife’s looks, her brains, her optimism, and her quick wits, combined with my love of ice cream.

    We’re all going to blend eventually … it’s what humans do.

  24. 24.

    Tom in Texas

    February 15, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    8) We may have been spared Carrottop

  25. 25.

    canuckistani

    February 15, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    Saw an interesting show on PBS the other day talking about blackness in America – doing DNA investigations of a number of notable African Americans and discovering, among other things, that a lot of them are carrying a lot of “white” DNA. From here, they went off on interesting tangents on what it is to be black, the slave trade, pinpointing the areas of Africa where individual’s ancestors came from.. all quite fascinating.
    I’d be twice as fascinated to see which white people are carrying around “black” DNA and aren’t aware of it. I suspect the race mixing thing is a lot more advanced than most people realize.

  26. 26.

    Zifnab

    February 15, 2008 at 4:43 pm

    My kids are part Asian, part European, part Arab, and apparently part Martian.

    Cuckold much?

  27. 27.

    zsa

    February 15, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    Cuckold much?

    It was one of those wild nights …

  28. 28.

    Jake

    February 15, 2008 at 5:24 pm

    I wonder what America would look like if we had an influx of ten million Asian women of child-bearing age several decades ago?

    The GOP’s election year ads would feature thugs with Asian (rather than African-American or Hispanic) features committing crimes.

    You see, with the hordes of Yellow Commies to worry about, people would have started giving the African-Americans a break a little bit sooner and these days critters like Tommy Gun Tankredo wouldn’t have time to scream about the Menace from South of the Border.

  29. 29.

    tom.a

    February 15, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    Maybe foot-binding would be all the rage now…

  30. 30.

    HyperIon

    February 15, 2008 at 5:33 pm

    I’d be twice as fascinated to see which white people are carrying around “black” DNA and aren’t aware of it.

    the descendants of Thomas Jefferson are white people with black DNA (from Sally Hemmings) who did NOT want to be made aware of it. as i watched that Gates-hosted program on PBS, i pondered the difference between the reactions from black and white people. i also learned much about the cruelty of slavery.

  31. 31.

    Reverend Spooner

    February 15, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    It makes me hate Kissinger even more that he didn’t try to take Mao up on this one. Thanks, John, you’ve accomplished something I didn’t think was possible…

  32. 32.

    Dennis - SGMM

    February 15, 2008 at 6:05 pm

    It makes me hate Kissinger even more that he didn’t try to take Mao up on this one. Thanks, John, you’ve accomplished something I didn’t think was possible…

    Speaking as someone who’s had Yellow Fever forever and who was in his twenties back then: Fuck you Kissinger, you heartless bastard!

  33. 33.

    Joe

    February 15, 2008 at 7:11 pm

    Uh, have you guys ever considered that a lot of the ‘yellow fever’ sentiments expressed in this thread are pretty fucking racist, in a sense, even if you intend them to be complimentary or light-hearted?

  34. 34.

    myiq2xu

    February 15, 2008 at 7:28 pm

    I wonder what America would look like if we had an influx of ten million Asian women of child-bearing age several decades ago? Would it have changed marital structures and the culture, with that many available women? Would it have hastened the advances of the women’s rights movement? It would seem something like that would have a dramatic impact on society (much like what happened in Europe during the Great Wars when populations of young men were killed).

    Would Utah have re-legalized polygamy?

    Snark aside, California was the first state to dramatically liberalize divorce laws in the 50s.

    The 1850’s.

    When Eastern men heard that there were gold nuggets just lying on the ground in California (true, but it didn’t last long) they rushed here without bringing many women along. By the time California gained statehood the gender imbalance was something like 50 -1 and it was a sellers market for the available women. Many married women discovered that they suddenly had much better prospects and wanted to trade up. And because single men outnumbered married men who were accompanied by their wives, divorce was made fairly easy to get.

    Another funny consequence of the gold rush was that men who stayed back east were perturbed by the sudden scarcity of prostitutes. The bordellos in NOLA were practically abandoned when the working girls headed west for greener pastures.

    BTW – I hear that the sex workers (male and female) expect to do much better during the GOP convention than the Democratic get-together this summer.

    It’s not necessarily that the Dems don’t utilize their services, it’s that the GOPers are more inclined to request the kinky stuff that costs the big bucks.

    Just ask David Vitter.

  35. 35.

    Dennis - SGMM

    February 15, 2008 at 7:40 pm

    Uh, have you guys ever considered that a lot of the ‘yellow fever’ sentiments expressed in this thread are pretty fucking racist, in a sense, even if you intend them to be complimentary or light-hearted?

    No. I have always found Asian women to be particularly attractive. I find them esthetically attractive, that’s all. I have lived only five years in Asian countries so I may be suffering from a deficit of experience with The Exotic East.

    On the other hand, you could be a moralistic twit who’s talking out of his ass.

  36. 36.

    empty

    February 15, 2008 at 7:48 pm

    I remember this story from way back when, though there was another part to this story. Kissinger had been lecturing Mao on freedom and the right of the Chinese to emigrate. I think he meant dissidents. Mao came back with this offer. That was the end of the lecture.

  37. 37.

    Steve T.

    February 15, 2008 at 9:14 pm

    An enormous irony of Mao’s offer is that China is now facing a demographic catastrophe: not enough women. I don’t have the numbers, though I don’t think they’re hard to find, but China already has a generation of millions of young men who are just realizing that most of them will never get married. There are just not enough women their age.

    Chinese culture puts a high premium on family, so these men have been set up by fate to be failures by their own cultural standards, and they’re not going to like it. Worse, marriage is often what stabilizes and civilizes otherwise wild and impulsive young men. What does a nation do with hordes of unstable, frustrated, unmarriageable men of military age whose anger is going to turn on somebody, somewhere? If it turns inward, it’s revolution. So you put them into uniform, into the army and direct their rage outwards. This means war, of course, but if you’re in charge in China, you’ll take war before revolution comes crashing through your window.

  38. 38.

    Digital Amish

    February 15, 2008 at 9:25 pm

    Uh, have you guys ever considered that a lot of the ‘yellow fever’ sentiments expressed in this thread are pretty fucking racist, in a sense, even if you intend them to be complimentary or light-hearted?

    Uh… Joe, have you been reading this place very long? This just might be the wrong crowd for a man of your sensitivity to be hangin’ with.

  39. 39.

    Nazgul35

    February 15, 2008 at 10:06 pm

    Maybe we could have sent them all to Alaska…they need women, don’t they?

  40. 40.

    grumpy realist

    February 15, 2008 at 10:26 pm

    Joe, please look up the word SNARK in the dictionary. Also you have no idea how many of us happen to BE in the class of the people we are supposedly disparaging, right? (Well, there’s some Malkin-bashing, but I think we know most people have far better reasons to have negative feelings about Our Lady of Perpetual Rage.)

    We’re just having fun and games because the idea of a conversation like this between Mao and Kissinger is so loopy to begin with.

    Sheesh.

  41. 41.

    grumpy realist

    February 15, 2008 at 10:29 pm

    (oh, except for Rawshark’s comment. That one up there is pretty putrid.)

  42. 42.

    asdf

    February 15, 2008 at 10:44 pm

    A somewhat different version of that story has been circulating for years. The way I heard it, Kissinger took Mao (or Chou En-Lai or someone like that) to task for China’s restrictions on emigration (sort of like the USSR’s). Kissinger said the Chinese government should allow people to leave if they wanted to. Mao retorted “ok, fine, we’ll do that. How many hundred million do you want us to send YOU?”. Needless to say the US hasn’t pressured China on that particular issue since then.

  43. 43.

    rachel

    February 16, 2008 at 12:05 am

    Nazgul35 Says:

    Maybe we could have sent them all to Alaska…they need women, don’t they?

    Alaska: Where the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

  44. 44.

    Conservatively Liberal

    February 16, 2008 at 12:21 am

    Joe, I would hope that people of one (or more) races/ethnicities can find those of another race/ethnicity attractive. When I say that an Irish lass is hot (I luv that red hair!), and I say an Asian woman is hot (and they are!), they are one and the same. The more people who feel this way, the better our societies will blend, erasing ‘lines’ that some people get hung up on.

    Kissenger, you are an idiot! But I wonder what China would have wanted in trade for 10 million women.

    “Here, we will give you beads, blankets and whiskey, you give us women.”

    Oh, been there and done that.

  45. 45.

    Reverend Spooner

    February 16, 2008 at 9:04 am

    Uh, have you guys ever considered that a lot of the ‘yellow fever’ sentiments expressed in this thread are pretty fucking racist, in a sense, even if you intend them to be complimentary or light-hearted?

    No. My wife’s Chinese. Anyway, I hardly see how pro-interracial sentiments are “racist.” The only way to eliminate the artificial constructs known as “races” is to fuck them into oblivion. Then the Human Race will be one again. Or at least we’ll find some other stupid shit to discriminate based on, like religious preferences or our tastes in sports teams.

  46. 46.

    zsa

    February 16, 2008 at 9:50 am

    Not meaning to pile on here, but I wonder who’s going to tell my kids that Daddy can’t take their little yellow asses to baseball and the playground anymore, because Daddy’s a fucking racist.

    Actually, when I first read Dennis’ comment about Yellow Fever, I thought he had malaria.

  47. 47.

    Punchy

    February 16, 2008 at 9:51 am

    Uh, have you guys ever considered that a lot of the ‘yellow fever’ sentiments expressed in this thread are pretty fucking racist, in a sense, even if you intend them to be complimentary or light-hearted?

    my aporogies. sank you.

  48. 48.

    dmhlt

    February 16, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    To add to the oddity, according to CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/14/chinese.women.ap/index.html), the Secretary of State replied:

    “It is such a novel proposition,” Kissinger replied in his discussion with Mao in Beijing. “We will have to study it.”

    Gee, thanks Hank … but what is it you’re exactly planning on studying?

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