NEW PUBLICATIONS Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. 400 pages.
Reviewed by RICHARD P. CINCOTTA Richard P. Cincotta is a senior research associate at Population Action International in Washington, D.C.
From Ultrasound to Insurgency Although this review will challenge the authors’ predictions, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population is an impressively researched work: it is provocative, path-breaking, and deserving of a place in the personal library of all those who consider demographic security issues relevant to contemporary society. Throughout the book, political scientists Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer do an admirable job of digging through vital statistics to show the nature and extent of imbalanced sex ratios at birth, assembling historical and contemporary evidence, and making the case that we should take seriously the reports— particularly from China and northern India—of generations approaching marriageable age with an uncommonly large proportion of men. The authors’ thesis is clear from the outset. A large demographic dominance of males, they contend, could directly unsettle Asia’s political environment. These women-short generations are destined to cast off millions of “bare branches”—a pre-revolutionary Chinese expression that disdainfully describes young men who do not
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marry and build a family. In the past, Chinese officials looked upon bare branches with suspicion, portraying these young men as shiftless troublemakers. Because their behavior was not constrained by familial responsibilities and social obligations, bare branches could be easily recruited by dangerous political malcontents and antisocial subcultures, and then cultivated into a military force. On this point, Hudson and den Boer are unwavering: high sex ratios were dangerous in 19th century China, and they still are today. I am not so certain. Within the authors’ neatly forged chain between thesis and validation, I find two weak links. First, they assume that sex ratios at birth—and sometimes sex ratios of entire populations—represent the sex ratio that young marriageable men encounter. I contend that these ratios are not representative, which matters immensely. Second, Hudson and den Boer sift through history to identify the security dimension of these surplus bachelors. But I do not believe that in this case, the historic past is relevant to China or India’s future.
Which Sex Ratio? In Bare Branches, Hudson and den Boer convincingly link increases in the sex ratio1 at birth in China and India (and several other countries) to son preference, expressed in the differences in male and female infant mortality, and