The unbearable loneliness of the young Chinese man

China’s one-child policy has a lot to answer for. A government-enforced system of punishment against families who chose to have more than one child led to a birthing against girls.

In a male-dominated economic system, girls were seen as a burden. They were often terminated in the womb, or sometimes abandoned to die.

One of the consequences of the policy, which operated from 1980 to 2016, is there are now approximately 30 million “surplus men” in China. The figure is the numerical difference between males and females born under the policy.

Behind the statistic lies 30 million lonely, frustrated lives. The story of one of them, a young man from the city of Hefei identified as Wu, is told in a short documentary film made by Violet Du Feng, a Chinese filmmaker based in New York.

Can a man be alone in a nation of one billion? Relegated to a consuming but low-status job as a delivery driver, Wu would like nothing more, like most humans, than a partner to love.

Unable to find a girlfriend in his late 20s — something even his child niece appreciates is a significant personal failure — Wu seeks help from a male dating coach, who looks even more boyish than him.

The camera captures Wu and two a couple of other single men practicing conversations and filling out dating apps.

Wu doesn’t need social polish or clever lines. China has raised him without the emotional tools to connect to other people. The emptiness of his life — a world without brothers or sisters, satisfying employment or some kind of community — has left Wu with nothing to say.

“You have to find more stuff to talk about,” says the dating coach, who has had 3000 clients.

“My life couldn’t be more ordinary,” Wu says, and you believe him.

The heart-breaking sight of young, decent, lonely men innocently brainstorming how to meet potential mates is followed by even sadder scenes.

In Wu’s city the place to meet women in real life is a plaza outside a shopping centre where young people congregate in the evening. Wu and his fellow singles, under the eye of their coach, stand around, girding themselves to approach women.

Only the truly bold or deeply desperate would subject themselves to such ignominy.

They have one main gambit, which isn’t bad. “Hello, can I follow you on WeChat,” they say, a reference to the popular Chinese social media site.

Not one successful approach is captured on film. Some women decline politely. Others don’t acknowledge they have been approached.

An irony of the one-child policy is that it has given the girls who survived great choice over their adult partners. Unsurprisingly, they gravitate towards more successful men, which is why the “surplus men” are disproportionally working class or poor.

Ordinary lives turn out decent people. But it’s hard to compete for a mate when your sex is outnumbered 30 million-to-one.

Only the Lonely, the title of Du Feng’s short film, isn’t intentionally political. But it demonstrates, on the personal level, how communist birth policies have exacerbated social inequality in China, in addition to impoverishing millions of lives.

For Australians, the message is important than many may think. Australia is now partly Chinese. An estimated 1.5 million people of Chinese heritage live in Australia. Almost half are based in Sydney.

They will inevitability change their new country. To understand why and how, non-Chinese Australians need a sense of the society they left.

Many members of the Chinese diaspora are proud of China’s economic success. Some are, no doubt, traumatised too by the authoritarian decisions made to achieve it.

China’s one-child policy stands as one of the great non-violent abuses of political power in history and reinforces why government should be kept away from women’s bodies.