When boys are more desirable than girls, guess which gets aborted -- and what the long-term demographic consequences are.

It seems like an ordinary village school, deep in the farm hills of Hainan Island in southern China.

A red Chinese flag flutters in front of the white-tiled building on the village's main street. Outside are rice paddies, water buffaloes, banana trees and grass-roofed houses.

But look more closely at the school's Grade 6 class: row upon row upon row of boys. There are 34 of them in this classroom, and only 20 girls. The same is true across the entire school, where 180 boys vastly outnumber 105 girls.

“It's always a headache to keep order in this school,” said Xing Zhen, the principal of Sanbai Primary School. “The boys are always misbehaving. They run all over the place, climbing the trees and the walls.”

What he really fears is the restless intensity of boys who grow up to become unmarried men. There are already hundreds of single men in nearby villages, an army of unhappy bachelors. “They can't find wives, and it affects the social stability,” Mr. Xing says.

All across China, the dangerous combination of modern technology and traditional beliefs is creating a huge army of single men. By 2020, more than 30 million men of marriageable age will be unable to find wives. Ultrasound machines and selective abortions, combined with China's restrictive one-child policy, are helping parents to skew the gender ratio, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Well, this could go a long way towards reducing the Chinese population -- or make them more warlike, with "excess" men being bled off through wars of aggression.

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