I posted this item to my Twitter, but it was too good to let languish there. It seems taking concubines is all the rage among China’s high-status men:

SHANGHAI – The saying “Behind every successful man, there is a woman” has a twist in China, where it seems that behind every corrupt male official, there is at least one concubine. A top anti-graft official recently acknowledged in public that 95% of the corrupt officials netted in Beijing’s crackdowns kept mistresses.

China’s millennia-old culture of men keeping concubines is back, with many communist party and government officials now keeping at least one “second wife” as a status symbol or to satisfy his sexual needs.

Keeping a mistress is nothing new, but the problem of Chinese women being hogged by a small number of alphas is exacerbated by the fact that China is the world’s largest kielbasa fest.

Some people have joked that the trend has made it even more difficult for non-officials to find a wife, given China’s imbalanced sex ratio. (According to the semi-governmental All-China Women’s Federation, the sex ratio among newborn babies in 2005 was 119 boys to 100 girls.)

The laws of sexual economics dictate that the sex that has the fewer numbers has the upper hand in the mating game. This explanation, however, doesn’t take into account the differing criteria by which men and women select mates. Because women are drawn to socially dominant men, a glut of males makes the alphas among them stand out and look better. In environments where males outnumber females by a sizable margin, the alpha males can win over women more easily. A paucity of women benefits both them and alphas, leaving betas with nothing.

The ancient Chinese tradition of men keeping concubines was attacked by the Communist Party when it came to power in the 1949 revolution. With its “iron fist”, the party under Chairman Mao Zedong also successfully weeded out other “social evils” such as prostitution and drugs. Bigamy is still outlawed today, at least on paper.

Mao was evil, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that dispossessed, sexless young men have always made great revolutionaries. Men who are unable to get any opportunity to reproduce have no reason to care about the welfare of their society. As the number of sexual losers in a society grows, the chance of said losers working to destroy said society in hopes of creating a new one where they are on top also grows. Because of the fluid nature of status in society and the human capacity for intelligence and innovation, “loser” men can topple the societies that wronged them quite easily. The role of mate-less men in fomenting many of the world’s revolutions has been largely ignored by the public, but is very real. Forget women; hell hath no fury like a beta scorned.

With the advent of economic modernization and capitalistic values in China, an undercurrent of sexual liberation and material decadence has also emerged, resulting in the return of concubines and an increase in extra-marital infidelity.

Chinese female infanticide and the idiotic One Child Policy created the problem. All the advent of capitalism did was catalyze it.

The current record holder in terms of number of mistresses is Xu Qiyao, the former director of Jiangsu province’s construction bureau whose death penalty over corruption was reprieved. Xu, who was in charge of infrastructure projects in the eastern Chinese province, had kept more than 140 mistresses. Anti-graft officials were astonished when they found Xu’s sex diary which recorded the names of all his mistresses and his sexual experiences with them.

Over 140 mistresses. That’s a lot of ladies to keep on the string. Remember, for every woman who serves as an alpha’s mistress, there’s a beta who comes home every night to a bottle of Jergens and Brazzers Volume 3.

China’s new concubine culture is not limited to government officials. The phenomenon has become widespread, with the so-called “concubine villages” springing up in coastal cities.

The average woman would rather have part of a winner than all of a loser.

Jin Weizhi, the general manager of a State-owned milk company who was convicted of bribery and embezzlement in 2000, once said: “Keeping mistresses is not only for physical needs. It’s more about a symbol of status. If you don’t have several women, people will look down upon you.”

Absent cultural institutions such as marriage, men who can’t get women are regarded as losers. Men who can get women are regarded as weirdos if they don’t swoop as many as they can. These facts are universal across countries and cultures.

The Southern Weekly quoted the wife of a high-ranking official in central China as saying that the residential compound for officials where she lived “like a widows’ village” because men seldom returned home. Many wives were aware of their husbands’ infidelity, but chose to keep silent over family interests.

A prequisite of being married to an alpha is the willingness to tolerate his tomcatting. If you’re a woman and you can’t bear the thought of your husband banging other chicks on the side, marry a beta.

The resurgence in concubine culture led the Communist Party in 2007 to start a massive crackdown on officials keeping mistresses. The party conducted its first-ever survey on the marital status of government officials and its Beijing committee even ordered officials to report marriage changes to the authority. So far the measures have had little effect.

Trying to fight the human sex drive is like trying to shoot down an airplane with a slingshot and driveway gravel.

Earlier this month, the government of Meishan City in Sichuan Province banned “abnormal relationships” between officials and women. However, the ban was widely criticized for being impractical – the government did not specify what an “abnormal relationship” is or what penalties officials would face.

Defining extramarital relationships as “abnormal” is head-slappingly stupid, considering they are very normal.

Like most media in the world, the Chinese press laps up juicy stories about corrupt officials and their mistresses. Still, if the perpetrator remains in power, few dare to question his fidelity to his wife or his cleanliness from corruption. In the United States, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford – who almost lost his job for meeting his mistress – must be envious of his Chinese peers.

People instinctively side with alphas over betas. Not surprising. And the reason Sanford “almost lost his job” was because he was a moron who left the country without warning, and when he came back, he publicly flagellated himself for a week for doing what came naturally and waxed bathetic like a teenage girl about meeting his “soulmate” (a word no grown man should ever use).

This is the reason why China will not become the next superpower. A growing population of woman-less betas is a recipe for anarchy and chaos.  I predict that the current regime in Beijing will be toppled sometime in the next fifty years. And when the government falls, the usual suspects among the pundit class will cheer it as a victory for democracy and freedom, claiming how the Chinese “yoof” wanted to breathe free or some nonsense, when in fact, all it was was a bunch of horny young guys who just wanted to get laid.

Short of killing off the excess betas in a massive war, China is screwed eight ways to Wednesday. Has the Mystery Method been translated into Chinese yet?