Xie Zuoshi, an economics professor at Zhejing University of Finance and Economics, sparked an online backlash after he advocated for polyandry (women taking multiple husbands) in a since-deleted post on his blog.

It is estimated that China will have 30 million single men, called guanggun ("bare branches"), by 2020.

"With so many guanggun, women are in short supply and their value increases," Mr Xie wrote, as reported by the New York Times.

"But that doesn't mean the market can't be adjusted."

According to Xie, the oversupply of eligible bachelors (which presents issues later in a single man's life as their financial security throughout retirement is, by law, dependent on contributions from their children) 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."

Roughly 118 boys are born for every 100 girls in China.

The gender imbalance has been attributed to  several factors, mainly related to the country's recently-relaxed one child policy and the practice of sex-selective abortion, which is technically banned although the ban is poorly enforced.

However, Xie's economic approach to the country's romantic problem was not well received.

After receiving an onslaught of negative comments on his blog (one Weibo user asked, "Is this a human being speaking?" while women's rights campaigner Zheng Churan wrote in an essay on WeChat that the argument treated women as though they were "commodities like houses or cars"), Xie removed the blog post, replacing it with one defending his right to an opinion.

"Because I promoted the idea that we should allow poor men to marry the same woman to solve the problem of 30 million guanggun, I've been endlessly abused," he wrote.

"People have even telephoned my university to harass me. These people have groundlessly accused me of promoting immoral and unethical ideas."

Xie went on to argue that those who could not provide an alternative solution should not criticise him for "violating traditional morality".

"You are in  favour of a couple made up of one man, one woman. But your morality will lead to 30 million guanggun with no hope of finding a wife," he wrote.

"Is that your so-called morality? Think of it like this: If you were a guanggun, would you still be in favour of one man, one woman?"

Historically, polyandry in rural China has been a known occurrence.

In his book Polyandry and Wife-selling in Qing Dynasty China, Stanford University historian Matthew Sommer alleges that from 1700 well into the 1900s women were known to take multiple husbands, although it was primarily a practice among peasant families and was regarded as immoral by the elite.

Fairfax Media