I don’t know whether this belongs in International Politics or Culture & History, so I’m putting it here.
Two political scientists warn that Asia’s lopsided sex ratios threaten world peace
Here’s the paragraph related to Taiwan:
[quote]The authors rest their case in part on historical case studies. Female infanticide was rampant in 18th-century China, and the Qing dynasty responded by encouraging single men to colonize Taiwan, they write. As a result, Taiwan developed an extremely high sex ratio and soon was swept by groups that combined banditry with anti-imperial rebellion. The “Heaven and Earth Society” became so powerful that in 1787 the government was forced to send thousands of troops to restore order.
[/quote]
It looks like a land war between China and India is going to be inevitable by 2020, unless China lashes out at Taiwan or India lashes out at Pakistan instead…or perhaps all of the four wars above happen, plus a few more wars like China invading Siberia, on the side.
Men without women are the most dangerous creatures on the planet.
I read somewhere (so it’s of questionable veracity) that they could ship the entire female population of Taiwan off to China and it still wouldn’t make up for the ‘missing’ women.
The sex ratio reported for Taiwan seems a little high - the implication that sex selection is still taking place, albeit on a much smaller scale than China, disturbs me :s
I confess to having not yet read the full article, just the quote Mod Lang posted. I fancy myself a bit of an amateur Taiwan historian (my wife and I’s forthcoming book on chinese martial arts manuals has a chapter on Taiwanese martial arts history and I am preparing an article on criminal law cases in Qing era Taiwan) and if the authors are claiming that the lopsided sex ratio of babies was the cause of any of the events they mention—they are completely off base.
In fact they exhibit considerable lack of knowledge of taiwan’s history. Now I am not trash talking them for that. It is a single example in what I presume was a fairly long article, but it was screwed up from a history standpoint. (e.g. the Qing dynasty never encouraged immigration to Taiwan, they discouraged it…at one point (mid 1800s) it was a crime to move to Taiwan.)
The general thesis however I would tend to agree with. Too many boys can lead to trouble. In Qing times unmarried, unpropertied young men were known as “bare sticks” (get your mind out of the gutter) and they were the bulk of the recruits for the various “secret societies” (I put that in quotes because they were not really “secret” since everyone knew who they were and who was in them) and the various anti-Qing rebel groups.
Well time to get back to work,
take care and thanks for posting the link,
Brian Koxinga
“Overthrow the DPP and Restore the Ming”
On the flip side maybe if they can’t get mates they might turn to alternate lifestyles 
which might be just as detrimental to population growth.
You mean, like monasticism? 
If it is true, as generally accepted, that 10% of males and 5% of females in the general population are homosexual*, then that will help make the imbalance less serious. Factor in the higher proportion of males who die young due to accidents, war, etc., and we can just about afford to have a birth ratio of 10% more sons than daughters, without having to fear such consequences as suggested in Mod Lang’s post. Nevertheless, selective abortion and infanticide are abhorrent practices that governments everywhere should do their utmost to prevent.
[* The head of the American Psychological Association, Bryant Welch, testified on 2/6/89 that the APA had found “in fact all the research supported the conclusion that homosexuality… is a sexual orientation found consistently in about ten percent of the male population and approximately five percent of the female population… research showed that across different historical eras and in totally different cultures the incidence of homosexuality remained the same irrespective of public attitudes and prohibitions.”]