What Happens to China’s Surplus Men?

Review

What Happens to China’s Surplus Men?

The one-child policy’s gender imbalance has spawned desperate bachelors, dubious gurus, and a rising manosphere. December 12, 2025, 3:00 PM

Chinese bachelor Zhou poses with Huskies.

When you’ve had no luck in the dating department, a makeover is an easy place to start. The trouble is, you don’t always know what needs to change. For Chinese bachelors Zhou, Wu, and Li, dating coach Hao has a blunt answer: everything.

Violet Du Feng’s documentary The Dating Game , now in theaters in New York City, follows these men’s attempts to reboot their dating lives in the wake of China’s former one-child policy. A long-standing preference for sons created one of the world’s starkest gender imbalances. “We have no women,” Hao says. Indeed, in 2015, the