Before the project

DefiChine follows on from two previous surveys on the individual situations and the sexual behaviour of single men, one in rural China, and the second on migrants in the suburbs of Xi’an, conducted in 2008 and 2010 respectively.

Starting from the premise that unmarried men in contemporary China only have limited access to the prerogatives traditionally associated with marriage (children, cohabitation with a partner, heterosexual relations, etc), and that if this situation is involuntary, it can lead to frustrations which are difficult to overcome in socially acceptable ways, the publications that resulted from these surveys demonstrated that unmarried men have much less active sexual lives than married men.

Furthermore they established that extreme poverty is an additional factor of exclusion for Chinese men, because it not only excludes from marriage but also from any sexual activity, and that single men are, on average, exposed to greater health risks in their sexual relations with a low use of condoms and poor knowledge of STDs.

These exploratory studies paved the way for further data collection initiatives, and allowed us to identify new research questions that are at the heart of DefiChine.

These surveys were jointly financed by INED and Programs for Chang Jiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in Universities, Chinese Ministry of Education, (Grant No. IRT0855), led together with the Institute for Population and Development Studies (IPDS, China), which is also a partner to DefiChine.
Male singlehood, poverty and sexuality
Le lien entre célibat et pauvreté est largement documenté. Dans le district rural étudié, la pauvreté constitue un double facteur d’exclusion. Non seulement la pauvreté exclut les hommes du mariage, mais elle exclut aussi les célibataires les plus pauvres de toute activité sexuelle.

Condom use intentions
The study provides new information about sexual risk factors among unwanted male bachelors in rural China, and helps to better understand condom use mechanisms among this specific population group.

Sexual behaviours
Les hommes connaissant un célibat non choisi adoptent des pratiques sexuelles compensatoires pour pallier l’absence de partenaire légitime, mais que cette compensation n’est partielle. Autrement dit, ils ont en moyenne une sexualité moins active que les mariés.