A mysterious Chinese database has been found online with details of 1.8 million women that includes a field that reads as “BreedReady.”

Discovered by security researcher Victor Gevers and revealed over the weekend, the database, which has since been taken offline, also included names, phone numbers, addresses, education, location, ID number and marital status. The purpose of the database or who compiled it is completely unknown.

The data primarily listed women living in Beijing, with 89 percent listed as being single, 10 percent divorced and 1 percent widowed. The average age of women in the database was 32 while the youngest person was 15. The youngest labeled as “BreedReady” was 18.

For context, Beijing has a population of 21.54 million while China has a population of 1.386 billion, meaning the database itself was relatively small compared with the number of people it could have included.

In China, they have a shortage of women. So an organization started to build a database to start registering over 1,8 million women with all kinds of details like phone numbers, addresses, education, location, ID number, marital status, and a ”BreedReady" status? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/fbRKsbNHPJ

— Victor Gevers (@0xDUDE) March 9, 2019

Gevers noted that there is no way to be certain what the “BreedReady” field is meant to mean. “We have talked to many people about this one and the majority thinks [it] literally means what it says,” Gevers told The Register. “But others say this could be a language barrier thing.”

Otto Kolbl, a researcher and doctoral student specializing in China, also told The Register that people should not jump to any conclusions, suggesting that “BreedReady” might just be a Chinese developer’s bad English for “willing to have a baby,” something that would not be out of place on a dating app.

That hasn’t stopped Sinophobic Western media outlets jumping to conclusions, with some bizarrely suggesting that it may be the start of a forced breeding program, a la Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” to address a growing child shortage in the Middle Kingdom.

Photo: Pexels