"No one is forcing anyone to accept 'one wife, many husbands!'" said the Chinese economics professor, proposing a solution...

... to the problem of too few women in China to meet the demand of Chinese men who want wives.

The professor, Xie Zuoshi, blogged his idea. He has a lot of readers — 2.6 million followers for one of his 3 blogs — and this idea went viral — though the post itself has "been removed."

By 2020, China will have an estimated 30 million bachelors — called guanggun, or “bare branches.”...

One answer is: Stop aborting girls. But Xie's solution takes the current situation as it is.

Many men, especially poor ones, he noted, are unable to find a wife and have children, and are subsequently condemned to living and dying alone without offspring to support them in old age, as children are required to do by law in China. But he says he believes there is a solution.

Old-age pensions from the government? No:

“The guanggun problem is actually a problem of income. High-income men can find a woman because they can pay a higher price. What about low-income men? One solution is to have several take a wife together. That’s not just my weird idea. In some remote, poor places, brothers already marry the same woman, and they have a full and happy life.”

Polyandry has been practiced before in China, particularly in impoverished areas, as a way to pool resources and avoid the breakup of property. And apparently, there are Chinese who think polyandry may already be legal....

"If low-wage men don’t present women with much of a good deal, why not double, or triple, or quadruple them up?"

"Pool resources, boost household income, and promote family values at the same time?" writes Judith Warner at Time Magazine, quoted at Weekly Standard under the headline "Time Magazine Endorses 'Polyandry.'"

Well, Warner is employing humor to critique the conservative argument that marriage is the solution to poverty and to highlight the problem of low wages. I guess her use of the word "seriously" threw some readers off. Noting something Barbara Ehrenreich said that made an audience laugh, Warner wrote: "But I think we should take Ehrenreich seriously." Like you never heard a comedian, upon getting one laugh, set up the next joke with "But seriously...."

I know, it's difficult to perceive humor coming from women. You don't expect it, and then it's a little subtle sometimes. Maybe if a woman has multiple husbands, at least one of them will get each of her jokes. I'm serious.