Chinese pranksters offer beautiful Russian brides for single men. The authorities don’t find it funny
Online hoax in province where single men far outnumber women cuts to heart of country’s demographic problem
The authorities in southern China have accused two men of spreading false information that single men would be awarded foreign brides as part of a government poverty alleviation plan.
The two filmed themselves telling people that the government would be distributing “beautiful” Russian and Japanese women as wives to men in Guizhou, China’s poorest province, with a birth ratio over 120 men for every 100 women – one of the worst gender imbalances in the country.
According to a Weibo post by the local authorities, the pranksters are seen in the two clips telling local single men to keep their phones on as they would be contacted shortly to arrange the pickup for their new foreign wives.
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The footage was apparently intended to fool social media users that the initiative was genuine and it started circulating widely on WeChat groups in the area.
Rumours spread that the men were government workers affiliated with China’s poverty alleviation plan, a massive national drive spearheaded by President Xi Jinping to eliminate rural poverty by 2020.
When the authorities in Anshun city came to hear about the prank, they launched an investigation with other local police forces and eventually identified the two local men.
The prank, which has been circulating widely on social media, was inspired by a similar one last month when three men in another county of Guizhou masqueraded as poverty alleviation workers and went around offering wives.
Those men, who in turn, claimed to be copying earlier videos, were detained and fined by local authorities.