Author: Commander of the Night Watch
Preface
This is a man-made countercyclical distortion. Without fundamental reform, a cliff-edge demographic collapse is inevitable — one that will disrupt numerous industries, eliminate countless jobs, and alter the destinies of millions. The cyclical continuity of human civilization cannot be stopped, but institutional reform is achievable. And the first obstacle any reform must overcome is the weight of ingrained beliefs.
As long as the existing marriage institution remains intact, a cliff-edge demographic collapse cannot be avoided. Yes, it will generate profound social problems and reshape the futures of countless industries and individuals. But at this stage, no one has the courage to reach for the key that could actually solve the problem.
Many argue that economic development and capital-controlled media have inflated women’s expectations of marriage beyond anything realistic. Others say that as women’s education levels rise, so do their personal aspirations — and when those aspirations cannot be realized through their own efforts, they inevitably transfer that burden onto a prospective husband. If he cannot deliver the lifestyle she envisions, he simply doesn’t make the cut. A woman’s attraction to strength is a natural instinct: whoever can meet the desires of her heart is the one she will follow — and not only follow, but she will begin to think from his perspective, seeing herself as part of him.
In ancient times, when one lord was conquered by another, the retainers who owed him loyalty would often sacrifice their lives seeking revenge on his behalf. But his wives and concubines? They would not seek revenge. Instead, they would willingly become the wives of the victor, bear his children, and then rightfully consider themselves members of his household — standing firmly on the conqueror’s side in all things.
You cannot accuse them of lacking moral clarity. For them, this was simply the optimal survival strategy. Throughout history, mountains of classical texts have declared: a great man standing between heaven and earth must anchor himself in loyalty and righteousness. Never once have such demands been made of women. When a woman does display fierce moral conviction, she is praised as exceptional — “a woman who surpasses men.”
Strength determines status. Public narrative shapes belief. Human beliefs evolve with the times, but the structure of power does not shift so easily. As the saying goes: dynasties last a century, but great families endure for a thousand years. The concentration of resources in the hands of a few is not merely a tradition of human society — it is a tradition that can survive intact through the collapse and rebirth of entire dynasties. Do you think those who truly hold the determining power would change because someone shouted a slogan? How naive.
The vast majority of the world’s resources are controlled by men — but not by men as a whole. It is an extremely small number of men, organized as family dynasties or various forms of collective power blocs, who hold an iron grip on society’s vital arteries. These arteries are the most essential resources. Around them, successive layers of secondary structures grow — and those who populate these secondary structures are also carefully selected, bound to the core-resource holders by a thousand invisible threads. These relationships are exclusive and carry hidden thresholds that cannot be crossed. For ordinary men by the millions, the world above the ceiling is beyond reach — a level that cannot be touched no matter how much of a lifetime is spent trying. The vast majority of men will be locked into the lower-middle tiers, working like oxen and horses, trading their labor for just enough of the trickle-down resources — the thin leavings that fall from a higher stratum.
The whole structure resembles an ecosystem: sunlight pours straight down from the sky, bringing not only light but warmth. The towering trees greedily absorb nature’s gifts. Just below them are shorter trees, surviving on whatever light filters through. Below them come shrubs and weeds, and beneath them yet more plants, feeding on the faint, weakened warmth that has passed through layer after layer from above. Further down still are plants with even smaller energy needs and far greater numbers — in the depths of the primeval forest, the moss that lives in permanent darkness needs nothing more than the geothermal heat released by decaying leaves to survive. Human society mirrors this natural ecology with uncanny precision.
The difference is that every organism in nature knows exactly what it is, where it lives, and how it must survive. But human beings are different. Equipped with advanced minds, they have gradually learned the art of self-deception — constructing elaborate hypothetical framings around their own circumstances and the workings of the real world, manufacturing wishful expectations and illusory satisfactions.
There is a saying: from childhood, men are immersed in the full, unfiltered hostility of the real world. That feedback from reality will either break a man completely or drive him to swim upstream — to tear himself free from both the material constraints of his social position and the mental cage of his own psychology, completing in some sense a rebirth through fire. But girls, from childhood, are wrapped in an illusion woven by human hands — a shortcut that slides relentlessly toward the abyss. When the fog finally lifts, both the true self and the true situation become unbearable to face. Every gift that life offers is priced from the very beginning — it is just that when you are young, you have no way of knowing. And so, when a certain age arrives, if no one has built a shelter around her, the world suddenly feels like nothing but malice.
As economies develop, industries evolve from low-value, labor-intensive models toward high-value, high-profit technology sectors. In this process, only those who can meaningfully participate in these advanced industries will capture the enormous dividends they produce. Even the most basic level of entry requires specialized knowledge that meets the industry’s demands.
Those who participate at the next level up must command resources the industry needs. Even for talented individuals, the upfront cost of cultivating that talent rises sharply as the ladder rises. Consider: today, 95% of students at elite universities like Peking University, Tsinghua, and Fudan come from urban middle-class families and above. Families from the bottom rungs are not failing for lack of effort — they simply cannot compete no matter how hard they try.
Throughout the selection process, every threshold requires enormous hidden investment to climb. Without that investment, you stop right there. The system is formally fair — but in practice, every implicit threshold represents a cost. If that upfront investment cannot be made, no amount of effort will be enough to enter the high-yield industries. Society’s vigorous development may be genuinely inspiring — but none of it has anything to do with you.
This reality determines the sorting and hardening of the population: in fields where the upfront cost is relatively low, the pool of similar competitors becomes severely oversaturated. And it is precisely this oversaturation that produces involution (nei juan). As the economy grinds uphill, even food delivery is already overrun.
There are 70,000 graduate students delivering food for Meituan. The moment they flood into lower-barrier fields to make a living, every bit of knowledge and specialization they spent over a decade acquiring becomes useless. In that world, what determines their value is the speed of their legs. Put another way: if the upfront investment cannot secure a foothold in the corresponding industry, the only option is to survive in lower-yield sectors. When that happens, the entire investment produces not return but pure cost — a disastrous misallocation for the family, and a merciless further slide down the slope of fate for the individual.
The differentiation and hardening of people across strata plays out through industry. Men living within this system tend to see it more clearly and accept the reality sooner — they have been conditioned to it since childhood, and with rare exceptions, they remain relatively clear-eyed. But women, who from childhood have been wrapped in human-constructed illusion, lag far behind in understanding themselves and their circumstances. Deep inside every woman there exists a universal fix-all: “when all else fails, I’ll find a man who can meet all my needs and marry him.” It is every woman’s last resort — whatever life problem or hardship presents itself, the solution seems to be: find the right man and marry him, and all problems dissolve. In reality, this is itself an illusion.
As survival grows harder, if a woman’s place in the hierarchy is too low and neither her own capacity nor her family background can change her situation, that last resort becomes the final lifeline against a cruel reality. It is precisely because of this that women’s expectations of a marriage partner keep rising, their demands multiplying and diversifying — even if some of those demands appear contradictory and irrational from a man’s perspective. From a woman’s perspective, every single one is a non-negotiable necessity. Any deficiency in any dimension means having to face the pain of accepting reality as it is. Only full satisfaction can build the fantasy castle that insulates her from the world outside.
As industrial development accelerates the sorting and hardening of the population, resources concentrate with increasing intensity. Most ordinary people, no matter how hard they struggle, cannot break through the ceiling. When survival itself requires maximum exertion, men choose to lie flat (tang ping), while women intensify their hope of making a great leap upward. Even if it remains an illusion, it still offers something beautiful to anticipate and hope for.
Do men exist who can satisfy all of these demands? Yes — but far too few. And as the living environment continues to deteriorate, the number of women with these demands keeps growing. It is like a market where enormous sell orders pile up while almost no buyers appear. Why so few buyers? Because an artificial constraint limits the market: even if one player has the capital to buy 100 lots simultaneously, the trading rules allow him to purchase only one — and once purchased, he cannot buy again.
Suppose in ancient times there existed a tribe with 50 adult women and 50 adult men. Within a single year, how many newborns could this tribe produce at most? Fifty. Now suppose that in one hunting expedition, the tribe loses 45 adult men — only 5 remain. How many newborns can the tribe produce in a year? Still fifty. Now suppose all 50 adult men are unharmed, but a neighboring tribe raids and takes 49 of the 50 adult women. How many newborns can this tribe produce in a year? One.
This makes clear: the decisive factor determining a tribe’s reproductive capacity is the number of adult women — not the number of adult men. This is precisely why ancient tribal warfare seized not only livestock and property, but also the women of rival tribes — to grow the reproductive base of one’s own people.
As society develops, the concentration of resources is inevitable — but a cliff-edge demographic collapse is, in fact, solvable. The answer lies in reforming the existing marriage institution and restoring a tradition that endured for over a thousand years: the one-husband, one-wife, multiple-concubine system. The reason this system flourished for more than two thousand years was that it was our ancestors’ instrument for countering the periodic concentration of resources — which would otherwise leave vast numbers of marriage-age women unable to bear children, thereby threatening population levels. As the cycle extends and resources concentrate faster, the pool of men capable of meeting women’s aspirations for a great leap — men who make women willing to bear children within a secure environment — grows vanishingly small. And it is precisely these few men who, though possessing what most women desire, are bound hand and foot by the existing marriage institution.
The reproductive base is determined by the number of women of childbearing age; the driving force behind their willingness to reproduce is access to resources sufficient to sustain their lives. But the intense concentration of resources is unavoidable — throughout history and across civilizations, the periodic concentration of resources in human society cannot be reversed. In the agricultural era, the periodic consolidation of land could not be reversed no matter how many reforms were attempted. But that era had no modern marriage institution. The one-husband-one-wife model has disrupted the historically synchronized trend of productive resources and reproductive resources concentrating together, resulting in vast numbers of women unable to bear children. While this accelerating resource concentration also leaves large numbers of men without descendants, male numbers do not determine a group’s reproductive output within any given time period. It is the number of women of childbearing age, and their willingness to reproduce, that ultimately determines the survival trajectory of the whole.