An expert’s proposal to solve the looming social crisis caused by China’s gender imbalance by matchmaking urban “leftover” women with rural unmarried men has sparked controversy. Wu Xiuming, deputy secretary-general of the Shanxi Think Tank Development Association, a non-governmental organisation in central China that specialises in social development research, has called for authorities to urgently address a rise in the number of unmarried people by encouraging the migration of urban single women to rural areas, where millions of unmarried men are looking for brides. He urged women not to “feel afraid to go and live in rural villages”. In China, sheng nu, or “leftover women”, is a term used to describe unmarried – although usually highly educated and urban – women over the age of 27. Wu’s proposal quickly attracted criticism, with commenters on social media saying it was out of touch with reality. “What kind of brain can think of such an idea? Hasn’t he seen the huge disparity between these two groups? They are basically living in two parallel universes, with the communication between them being remarkably difficult,” wrote one person on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. “Even rural women don’t want rural men, let alone urban women. You think urban women are idiots [to marry rural men]?” another wrote. “This is an animal mating mentality. In this expert’s eyes, these two groups of people are just animals,” a third user said. Sharon Sun, a 38-year-old single woman working in the real estate industry in Shanghai, said she would not consider rural men as potential partners. “It’s impossible for me to date a rural man. It won’t happen even if there are no other men in this world,” she said. China’s sex ratio at birth is one of the most unbalanced in the world, with 114 males to every 100 females, resulting in a population with about 30 million more men than women, based on data from Statista, an international data provider. The average sex ratio at birth globally is about 105 boys for every 100 girls, according to the World Health Organisation. The imbalance in China between males and females is a result of its one-child policy, only recently abandoned, and Chinese society’s preference for sons. The gender imbalance is most acute in farming areas, where women have left to search for jobs and husbands in the cities. The difficulty that men in such rural areas have finding a bride is made worse by the expectation that they be able to offer a potential wife a high degree of financial security. A report last week by Xinhua Daily Telegraph said men in rural parts of Shanxi, Henan and Hunan provinces in central China have to offer as much as 1 million yuan (US$155,000) when asking for a potential bride’s hand in marriage. The money serves as a cash incentive to the bride and to buy a house and a car for the bride’s family. With far fewer women than men, competition to win a chosen bride’s hand in marriage in rural areas is fierce. Liu Xuan, a 26-year-old migrant worker who returned to his rural home in Dancheng county in Hen