I was reading up on Manchukuo and noticed that there was a huge gender disparity between men and women with there being many more men than women. I'm curious if this was just somehow a regional thing to the time period or if this phenomena was common across all of China. I know that there were a lot of potential parents that would get rid of female children after the one child policy was implemented but I thought that the phenomena was only limited to the past 35 years or so. So was the infanticide of girls common in pre republic China? Were there any other factors that factored into the huge gender disparity.
Since many upper class men had multiple wives how common was it for an average man to find a woman to marry and settle down? Was marriage in imperial China only for the privileged elite and a lucky few farmers?
I hope my question is straightforward and that I can possibly get an answer.
Thank you.
So, this is a fairly complicated question since it's really asking about foundational gender roles in Chinese society, which in turn requires a fair amount of background information on Confucian ideals.
One of the defining features of the structure of Chinese society is the four Confucian relations. These are 1) father to son 2) older to younger 3) husband to wife 4) ruler to subject. In Fei Xiaotong's 《鄉土中國》 (rendered in English as "From the Soil" or "Rural China"), a 1947 Chinese sociology text (really the Chinese sociology text from the father of Chinese sociology) the point is made quite clearly that the very notion of "gender equality" (my term not his) isn't compatible with the structuring of Chinese society. That's not to say that women cannot be respected as men are, or that women are not capable, but rather that, since the very foundation of Chinese society is these relationships, and since one of these relationships is entirely based upon biological sex and corresponding gender roles, a gender disparity as you mentioned is really just the natural order of things in this type of society. What you're calling a disparity Fei would likely call a difference in roles. How well a (Chinese) society functions is entirely dependent on how well people live up to these roles. From a Western point of view this may be seen as taking agency away from women, whereas from a Chinese perspective, certainly of the time period, it was seen simply as a recognition of a natural difference, just as there is a natural difference between young and old.
However, one of the (admittedly few) great things that Mao did when he came to power was address this and approach the idea of gender relations with a much more equal (Marx-influenced) view. The favourite quote from Mao on this is "Women hold up half the sky" (妇女能顶半边天, though whether Mao actually said that is debated, but that's for another thread). Under Communism Confucianism was villified and the notion of these fundamental relationships was rejected, though only temporarily/superficially, and have made a comeback since then.
Since many upper class men had multiple wives…
Was marriage in imperial China only for the privileged elite and a lucky few farmers?
Emphasis added. It was certainly not common for the average person to have multiple wives. It wasn't really common for the upper class either unless you're including mistresses in there as "wives". The average farmer (which ultimately was the average Chinese person at the time) wouldn't have been married to multiple women simultaneously.
Marriage was certainly not for the privileged elite.
I guess to go any deeper I'd like clarification on whether you're including concubines/mistresses under the term "wives" in your original question, or if you mean legal polygamy I'd be interested in seeing a reference for that.