It turns out that, (although) I'm a local guy and I happen to have been so interested in the dating topic of local (Chinese) guys. On and off I have gone through multiple threads of geoexpat, some other forums talking about socializing with Chinese people, Chinese learning sites and so on...
I'd like to start some new discussions here (with reference to what I wrote earlier, http://www.geoexpat.com/forum/thread29192-33.html)
Another article I just read is: Foreign women label Beijing a dating wasteland (apparently became problematic in an old thread here).
Well, when everything is said and done, the thing about male-female relationship can be said to be, in a way, entirely not really so dependent on cultural factors. My experience also shows it's all about whether someone is sociable enough to get a date, female or male. This whole gender imbalance issue has been so much discussed that I can no longer see much further, nice development of discussions.
But what I like to add here now is, though, again highly cultural.
Last night I (out of pure impulse and curiosity) received a Portuguese guy (I met him somehow in a language forum) who was about to finish his trip in Hong Kong. So we discussed a lot about language issues, food issues, cultural issues... and then he mentioned the dating thing in Hong Kong. With just days of observation, he was wondering how come so many white guys (very often rather old, big, tourist-like) were with some Asian women who "apparently" weren't Chinese. Some others were a combination of white guys and Chinese women. So, anyway, you can expect the same scene you've heard of/witnessed again and again.
And he asked me: why are western guys (here, he put it as "white") so much into Asian (Chinese) women? why not that western girls are into (local) guys?
With so much "reading knowledge", I asked him instead: why didn't you put the subject (western women) as the object?
I won't baffle you with linguistic logics, but what I see is it's even rarer to ask "why are Asian (Chinese) guys not so much into western women?"
In practice, I witnessed that in daily conversations Chinese guys I know/I bumped into everywhere at the uni/in forums usually simply don't care about the issue at all, usually claiming it to be out of the question. Or some are too superficial to have been put off purely by physical factors. Or some believe in the beta-male superstition. Here, just as how some might have well ignored the opinion of Chinese guys, they too have ignored the personality of western girls.
But I guess some cultural barriers are quite understandable. First, could you possibly assume that Chinese guys could speak very fluent English and, supposedly less plausibly, western women speak fluent Chinese? I considered it wholesale cultural discrimination when I (on exchange in Germany) bumped into some African girls (and some European as well) and they questioned how come I spoke poor English, and how they criticized my look. In fact, similarly, a minority of European girls back then also clearly rejected me based on look. On the contrary, many Chinese people are reserved enough not to criticize looks in public/in front of you at all. As a Chinese Chinese myself, I considered this too direct. But I found the criticism on my English even less acceptable. OK, let's say it was simply in a foreign country, but back in Hong Kong, clearly you couldn't blame the locals for poor English.
The second thing is the Chinese guys working long hours and don't quite know how to socialize. I can assure you that this is typical of our society. Unless some social upheavals take place, it'll just stay more or less the same with our working culture, and so will the way Chinese boys are raised and educated. If being humble/modest already denies you a chance since you are said to be too shy, I have nothing to say. If you don't understand one particular cultural trait and complain about it, and even complain in front of a Chinese guy and criticize himself (which is me) as well, my understanding would be that you don't care for my culture anyway and, you can expect, this will be a communication breakdown. Particularly here, I think any guys (or girls), Chinese or not, would almost certainly feel upset to see their culture being, not criticized, but instead downright rejected. As for the socializing thing, back in Hong Kong I discovered that the clubbing culture is more like a luxury than as an inexpensive kind of entertainment open to students as well (as in Germany). Clubbing is per se not really native to my country, so it doesn't surprise me that few Chinese people (guys included) go clubbing as often as in, say, the German environment.
A third thing is about their weakness with socializing. Yes, that might be true. But here, I think this has more to do with the male-female thing, not with culture. If you aren't sociable enough, you would fail anyway whether you try to approach women of race/nationality X or Y. But what about the rest who are sociable? I'll leave this to sociable Chinese guys (local or not) to talk about.
Personally, yeah, I do find it very difficult to approach the kind of girls I'm mentioning here. I study (instead of work) for long hours and I can't at all concentrate on socializing - unlike in Germany where I could do in a much more relaxed way. As an undergrad myself, going clubbing is at large out of the question either. Some people do manage it, but, well, I asked some of my male counterparts and they too considered it too hard. I can tell you guys that, in fact, most couples I've met, they got to know each other in very normal occasions such as being in the same major, the same class, have been in the same social occasion (all EXCEPT clubbing!). Some have met their significant others in voluntary work, in Christian social ciricles, etc. When I learned that my American acquaintance had had his first two girlfriends in California through going to parties, I truly didn't believe at all, but he clearly meant it. I've never ever met any Chinese couple of any age to have known each other in parties (in the LKF style, do you get me?). By the time I had to leave Germany, I had already harbored the simple assumption that, to have a stable, faithful, "normal" girlfriend (but who is non-Chinese), I could only possibly meet her in these kinds of normal occasions. However, I'd have a very slim chance by simply staying in Hong Kong or anywhere in my country. Hence, just as we say it's better to move to an Anglophone country to learn English better, most Chinese guys (I witnessed) would agree it's better to do the same to finally meet a foreign girlfriend. Hong Kong Chinese guys, contrary to the almost-being-stereotyped ones outlined in some mainland Chinese cities, are very pragmatic and, well, at least I personally know how to act properly as a Chinese gentleman. Superficially, you say they are "shy" and "think themselves as beta-males", but it's almost entirely up to Chinese Chinese guys to tell exactly what they are actually thinking about. To put it simply, like many Chinese women, many of them have too much financial and social, rather than cultural or even racial, burden in order just to lead a dignified/well-to-do life. By the time they can manage it, so you can expect what I'm going to say, they are already happily engaged with their ideal Chinese wives.
And indeed, you can consider the language thing and culture thing more deeply. It wouldn't be too impertinent to ask, instead of dates, just how many fluent learners of Chinese there are? Ordinary young Chinese people don't even expect any foreign counterparts to speak Chinese at all, hence all the linguistics assumptions, including those in the dating scene. I could tell from daily observation that, even at the university, the dating scene is just as similar. Many, many Chinese guys are out of the game anyway, whether they speak very good, good, or poor English - needless to say, the ratio of male and female expats is also well imbalanced.
Telling from some random memory about how some Africans had considered me as a Chinese and my female counterparts, and how we consider African people, I could even claim that the dating scene between Chinese and African people is even more like non-existent. At least, in physical terms, I suspect that our expectations don't quite match, and far less so than with Caucasian people, by far.
(hope my English is unambiguous and error-free, thanks)