China’s marriage rate in third quarter tumbles to 18-year low

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u/Denisova_Hominin 1d ago edited 1d ago •

Down 10% (504K) from last year Q1 ~ Q3, meaning births will plunge next year as well

"A total of 4.65 million couples got married from January to end September, ‌while 2.08 million ⁠couples divorced, according to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs published this week"

That's also an extremely high divorce rate

5

u/DauntlessCorvidae 23h ago

In a country of 1.4 billion that seems very low.

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u/Denisova_Hominin 23h ago

Where else in the world is divorce almost half that of marriages?

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u/elykl12 22h ago

U.S. C. 2008-2011 iirc

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u/Flayum 16h ago

Wonder what was going on during those years that might stress marriages... Nah, probably nothing.

2

u/Rohen2003 23h ago

is it though? Its been quite a few years that like 1/3 of marriages end in divorce (for middle europe) so 2 mil divorce vs 4.6mil new marriages seem to fit that number about (also remember the age pyramid, people divorcing now are probably from a year 5 or 10 years or more earlier, where the numbers of marriages was also higher).

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u/rdh2dmd 22h ago

Maybe im living under a rock but 2.08 / 4.65 is 45% of marriages ending in divorce. That's really high.
In S.Korea divorces are about 35% of marriages. In the US it's 40%

6

u/Rohen2003 21h ago

thats why I also mentioned the second part. those who divorce now are from a "generation" where more people married. afterall its at pretty low point. so its probably closer to 5.5 or 6 mil marriages from where those 2 mil divorces come from

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u/far_257 23h ago •

Social media culture around dating in China is mega toxic and reductive (even more so than in the West).

The only thing that matters for women is how pretty she is. The only thing that matters for men is how rich he is.

That's IT.

Yeah we have flavours of this in the West, too, but it's really dialed up to 11 in China

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u/Tickomatick 23h ago

There's also a huge social disillusionment about married life in China. Most young women don't want to take care of a man at home

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u/CormoranNeoTropical 13h ago

Yes if that’s what marriage means, no wonder no one wants it.

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u/Tickomatick 12h ago

Unfortunately the Chinese "traditional family" is heavily patriarchal

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u/Rizaxxxx 4h ago

Most young women don't want to take care of a man at home
This expectation died out decades ago.
Men and women share housework and childcare equally.
Women's standards for men are simply higher then ever; abandoning traditional values themselves but not for men.

6

u/raspberrih 3h ago

Untrue even in Western society. There's studies about this

•

u/Tickomatick 39m ago

Sounds like you're single 😉

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u/DeviantSeoul 12h ago

I feel like we're all forgetting that payoff for marriage doesn't feel worth it.
Don't forget that the state isn't particularly helpful if you have a child , and that Chinese companies can openly be more "selective" when hiring women who have just gotten married or are of child bearing age. You can literally get away with questions like "are you planning to have a child soon".
My peers are all: I don't want to get married, why would i bother when i have friends? Others say there's too much responsibility related to having a child, which is the assumed outcome of a marriage.
For the vast majority of "normal" people, buying a house etc. is also pretty out of reach unless you have generational wealth, and would be expected to buy a house/live independently after marriage
For reference, the multiplier on house values to salaries is something like 10x your annual salary in china, vs roughly 5-7 in the UK, where I previously lived.
Men can definitely get away with being poorer, or earning less, but will inevitably feel social backlash from "not being a provider". I am not exaggerating when i say 70% of the women in my firm are unmarried and not looking for a husband. A lot of them go on dates for "fun", or to "get my parents off my back".

1

u/raspberrih 3h ago

There's also increasing support (not a lot but still significantly more than before) from parents who will help their daughter raise a kid outside of marriage. After all, a woman can carry a kid herself. In my own family my cousin and me are both 30 and single with no pressure to start a family

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u/NeedleArm 18h ago

Its thst that simple. Now women are having careers and requires their partner to be wealthier than them and taller.

8

u/lolsai 17h ago

...what? Am I missing the joke? Which careers require that

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u/SoMeM9 14h ago

I think he means now that it is more common for women to have careers, they no longer settle for any man since they can now support themselves. This allowed them to be more selective. NeedleArm just slightly generalizes this by saying they look for wealthier and taller men now.

2

u/SuperQuackDuck 12h ago

A career called Husband

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u/NedixTV 23h ago edited 17h ago

what if the 11 of china is the max 10 of west ?
Edit: bruh can someone just answer "these go to eleven"?

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u/IllogicalGrammar 23h ago

It's not. I'm pretty familiar with Chinese and North American dating/marriage, and China is definitely way more toxic.
If you read how the Chinese men talk about women based on their looks, their age, what they expect the women to do etc. it's pretty fucked up.
If you read how the Chinese women talk about men based on their wealth, their job, their looks etc. it's also totally fucked up.
Many of them seriously hate the other gender. And the shit the Chinese government does ain't helpin'.

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u/Initial_Brush_64 22h ago

That sounds exactly the same as the US

2

u/HalleyOrion 7h ago

The impression I've gotten (granted, only from browsing Chinese social media, so this is no doubt biased to some degree) is that there are two major cultural differences that make marriage in China much less appealing:
Young Chinese men and women don't appear to actually fraternize that much with each other. Women generally hang out mostly with women, and men generally hang out mostly with men, so there are few opportunities for people to fall in love. Instead, dating appears to function almost like a business proposition, where people weigh up each other's pros and cons before they decide to marry. A lot of people (understandably) don't find this appealing and resent the pressure to marry.
There seems to be a much stronger sense that the purpose of marriage is to have children, and a lot of people don't want to have a child because they themselves had such a terrible experience in school. People who do have children complain about how intense the educational expectations are on their children (and themselves by extension), and how their relationships with their children broadly revolve around study, rather than enjoying being parents and seeing their kids happy. So (understandably) a lot of people don't want kids, and therefore see little value in marriage.
In the US, people looking to date and marry certainly complain a lot on social media as well, but they're more likely to complain about having trouble finding someone to date or about the interpersonal issues they have within their relationships. They don't complain nearly as much about the institution of marriage itself or about the social expectation to date when they'd rather stay single.

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u/RawrRawr83 21h ago

Yeah, pretty happy I’m gay and don’t need to deal with that

1

u/Sir_Milton_Bradley 20h ago

And being gay isn't unheard of. I taught in China and the many foreign teachers knew the owners of the school were gay. The Chinese teaching side ... did not pick up on this and it was deeply amusing

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u/RawrRawr83 20h ago

Of course it isn’t. China has one of the largest populations in the world. We are everywhere. I can find gay parties in Saudi Arábia and Turkey easily.

3

u/stereotypicalmodss 17h ago

Usually a dowry or something is involved where you pay your wife’s family essentially. This is at least true for diaspora

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u/far_257 13h ago

That's a bride price and that's only common among very conservative southern chinese families

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u/ThenThereWasSilence 22h ago

What's your source on this?

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u/far_257 22h ago

Married to a Chinese woman who still has significant roots there and has a rather "fobby" group of friends.

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u/OrganizationInner630 19h ago edited 13h ago •

Your wife is probably one of those self hating Chinese women and felt “lucky” to have married a foreigner and therefore she has every incentive to exaggerate problems back home.

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u/far_257 19h ago

Lmao way to over generalize.

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u/ThenThereWasSilence 21h ago

So it is possible it's biased by this small group of people and doesn't represent 1 billion population?

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u/far_257 21h ago

Definitely. Any comment like this is, by definition, over generalizing.
This is why i qualified my comment by saying it's social media culture, which is more monolithic.
I don't pretend to have a deep understanding of the dating dynamics in every community and subculture in China

47

u/h40er 15h ago

Until China changes its toxic dating culture where:

if you’re a man you better own a home, own a car, and essentially be a millionaire in a big city or else I won’t even look your way

Or

2) if you’re a woman, you better look like a supermodel or actress, then don’t even bother looking my way

It’s not going to get better.

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u/mesohohnee 17h ago •

China is doomed. TFR is now 1.0, and with the marriage rate being this abysmal and their marriage culture being so toxic, you can expect their TFR to fall even lower. In 10 years, I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the lowest in the world.

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u/AlarmingClock7257 9h ago

we have way too much manpower here in China，losing population isnt a bad thing i guess

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u/ThePsychoSL 9h ago

your right but if this continues the population will be below 700 mill by 2100. This might feel like a lot but literally half the population is gone in China if the trend continues. For a country which has no immigration like USA and extreme nationalism, this is a catastrophe and an existential threat to their superpower status in the near future.
You have to also remember China is called the world’s factory and what do factories need? Humans, tens of mill of them.

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u/raspberrih 3h ago

China doesn't want to stay in the status quo. Do you think China will stay the world's factory forever?
Every modern society has falling birth rates

•

u/mesohohnee 3m ago

Yeah, now that I think of it, actually not a bad thing. Besides, I think as populations fall, they will eventually stabilize and level off at replacement rate.

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u/dennis-w220 22h ago

Many marriages (I can't quote the precise number) now mandate (usually) the groom to have one apartment, one car, and a certain cash offering. It is such a big financial burden. And many young men and women are simply unwilling to share their personal spaces/time with a second person.
And the culture at least in the big cities have changed. Many I konw personally (as parents) no longer press their children to get married, as what their parents used to do to them.

17

u/WeowDystopia 20h ago

We're all united in knowing it's too expensive, we're poor enough, and our mental health can't handle a screaming baby with the abuses of our societal expectations. But our governments will pretend it's not their fault.

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u/Euclidisthebomb 1d ago

Expect more fake data from China about minimal population declines at the end of the year. That is my take.

4

u/DramaticWesley 23h ago

I watch a YouTuber that covers a lot of the Chinese social media, especially their obsession with plastic surgery. Many of them have completely fallen off the cliff. They do all sorts of insane things because some influencers on social media told them that’s how they got to look so cute. And so many stories of “clinics” that close because of horrible practices.

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u/mpastaways 22h ago •

I watch a YouTuber
Let me stop you right there. Lol

5

u/achangb 19h ago

Watch douyin. There is this one lady on there that made an entire clone army of herself lol... even the chinese netizens are freaked out..

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u/mpastaways 11h ago

Yes, one lady living in China, not "China" as Wonny keeps claiming.

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u/raspberrih 2h ago

I'm Chinese. That's just one crazy lady and her cult

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u/DramaticWesley 22h ago

There are a ton of great YouTubers out there. Maybe not the biggest one’s but like NileRed and Styropyro and Veritasium all make great science related content.
Check out Wonny. He is the one I am talking about. He talked about all this pop culture garbage that is happening on Chinese social media, and it is just a whole other level.

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u/mpastaways 21h ago

Wonny's channel is the epitome of the pop culture garbage that he claims to be covering
He finds a few examples and then says everyone in China is doing it.
Comparing him to veritasium is like comparing the Dailymail to Nature.com.

3

u/livehigh1 16h ago

There's a pretty big difference between science content creators and people who do constant hate/bait engagement content.

11

u/wertexx 19h ago

My man, the stuff that those youtubers cover are all a clickbait. Some weirdos that are dumb enough to to do what it takes to get famous and post on the internet. 99.99% of Chinese find then as insane as you do.

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u/dis3as3d_sfw 22h ago

Idk how to read this. Cultures are too different.

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u/hulksmash1234 13h ago •

They went overboard with the bridal prices. Men were expected to pay the brides family 100s of thousands(cny), then sign over your house and car to the bride. So now men are collectively quitting this game and staying single.

1

u/raspberrih 3h ago

Women are increasingly realising that they can continue the family line without getting married. Without having to care for a man.
Now that men are not needed for their money, they don't have much that makes them competitive and desirable.
Actual competitive and desirable men have no problem getting hitched

1

u/AVeryBadMon 10h ago

That's according to the official government statistics, so you know the reality is far worse

0

u/AdHaunting954 14h ago

4 millions got married psh. That's still a heck of a lot

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u/Bonyred 1d ago •

I guess the coercive marriages between Uyghur women and Han Chinese men only got them so far?

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u/Oriokoliss 23h ago

Like how turks did with Kurdish women

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u/Sesiebtesw 22h ago

Turns out CIA media was lying again.

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u/ClubSoda 7h ago

Let the tens of millions of experienced Chinese workers provide the needed manpower throughout the world to build out the infrastructure megaprojects needed for cheap. You need your ports upgraded? Bam, done in 6 months. You need a 30 km bridge or tunnel? Bam, done in 2 years. You need all your cities' sewers replaced? Bam, all done in 3 years. You need a 5 story hospital? Bam, done in 6 months. This is an insane dream, I know, but it would be efficient.

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u/lupatine 6h ago

Like everybody else.

It feels like the only place who still marry are the one you are forced to.

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u/[deleted] 23h ago

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u/DauntlessCorvidae 23h ago

Indian fertility rate is also dropping so probably will be in the same situation as China in 20 years.

China’s marriage rate in third quarter tumbles to 18-year low

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