According to a new study, sex selection in China will create an excess 32 million boys of reproductive age in China over the coming generation.

NYT: This disparity seems to surpass that of any other country, they said — a finding, they wrote, that was perhaps unsurprising in light of China’s one-child policy.

They attributed the imbalance almost entirely to couples’ decisions to abort female fetuses.

The trend toward more male than female children intensified steadily after 1986, they said, as ultrasound tests and abortion became more available. “Sex-selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males,” the paper said.

It's been said frequently that China may be the first country on earth to get old before it gets rich, simply due to the one-child-per-family policy.

But this huge male-female gap has scary geopolitical implications. Let's face it, a nation full of single males is bound to be dangerous and volatile, with a voracious desire to sublimate sexual frustration into bigger and bigger toys: guns and missiles. That's what single males the world over gravitate towards, and our best hope is that virtual reality and internet cafes full of first-person shooting games does the trick. But we doubt it will. Many will hope to graduate towards the real thing.

Beyond that, there are other reasons to fear that a war with China may eventually be in the cards. Ever heard of something called "taxation without representation"? Yeah, we had a war about it here. As we attempt to inflate our way out of debt, we're essentially taxing those who save our dollars. Turns out, most of them are in China. And the Chinese might not be crazy about being aggressively taxed by a foreign government.

So take that, add the 32 million single males, and throw in some natural resource hoarding for good measure and you got trouble. Then all you need is a small sparking of the powder keg, and it's on.