Ready to have some fun with numbers? Yeah, we thought as much!

Japan’s News Post Seven recently ran an article claiming that, based on various sets of statistics, 100 million men in China will go through their entire lives without having sex. Let’s go through it and see if they deserve a Nobel Prize or a kick in the pants.

The theory is based on a report from Renmin University published in 2007 titled “Modern Chinese Youth Population Status Report”, which says 50 percent of Chinese men between the ages of 15 to 35 are unmarried. In addition, of approximately 360 million men under the age of 35 in China, half are determined to be “unable to marry.”

So this leaves 180 million Chinese men unable to get hitched, but of course that doesn’t remove their ability to get laid (although it probably does say something about their chances). For this, News Post Seven referred to Shutaro Nakata, author of Chugokujin No Toriatsukai Setsumeisho (The Chinese People Manual).

He states that these “unable to marry” men also don’t have lovers and that they rely on masturbation or the sex industry to satisfy their libidos. Although it’s illegal, Nakata says there is an underground sex industry to be found in China. For example, in Shanghai one could get a call girl for just 600 yuan (US$97) or visit a brothel that operates under the front of a sauna, paying 650 yuan to have a special, grown-up good time.

However, the article also claims that according to the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) in 2009, 59 percent of Chinese workers had a disposable income of less than $5,000 a year. This would mean that for a man of such low income to make use of the aforementioned services even once, it would require about a quarter of their monthly spending money.

Based on the financial burden of using the sex industry in China, New Post Seven concludes that about half of these lusty, unmarried men would not make use of them. As a result the site claims that around 100 million men would go through life without having sex.

I’d give them an A for effort, but they lose marks for not showing their work. I was unable to find the original 2007 report from Renmin University — mostly through trouble finding the title in Chinese — and I couldn’t find the exact data mentioned by JETRO on their website, but they did mention several statistics similar to it. In addition the site seems to take some rather large leaps such as suggesting that over half of these terminally virgin men wouldn’t take the financial hit of visiting a hooker at least once. They seem to discount the concept of casual sex throughout the thought process as well.

Overall, I’d give them a D+ and ask that they get their parents to sign this article and return it to me.

Source: News Post Seven via Hachima Kiko (Japanese)
Image: Amazon