China has a headache because young people refuse to marry
Two years ago, Joanne Su was still worried when she turned 30 and her parents kept urging on getting married.
She works in a trading company in Guangzhou, south of China.
"At that time, I felt that 30 was an important threshold. As I got closer to this threshold, the more pressure I had to find the right person to marry, the pressure came from my parents and myself."
Now 31 years old, still single, but no longer worried.
She is one of a growing number of Chinese millennials delaying or refusing to marry.
According to Chinese officials and sociologists, this trend is partly due to the decades-long family planning policy that has meant a smaller number of young Chinese.
Some people even mocked a married woman on social media as a "married donkey", a derogatory term used to describe a woman who follows the patriarchal concept of marriage, according to Xiao Meili,
"This kind of personal assault is obviously flawed, but it also shows the fear of marriage for many people. They want women to see marriage as an unfair institution for both individuals and women," said
How young people have children is central to efforts to prevent the population crisis that could seriously affect China's socio-economic stability.
"Marriage and childbirth are strongly correlated. A falling marriage rate affects birthrate, which in turn affects social and economic development," said Yang Zongtao, an official at the Ministry of the Interior.
"This issue should be on top," he said, adding that the ministry will "improve related social policies and increase its propaganda efforts to guide people towards positive values.
In 2019, the marriage rate in China declined for the sixth year in a row to 6.6 per 1,000, a decrease of 33% from 2013 and the lowest level in 14 years, according to Civil Ministry data.
Chinese officials believe that the marriage rate has fallen due to the decline in the number of people of married age, a consequence of the one-child policy introduced in 1979. But demographers have for years warned of a crisis.
The following year, the Chinese government announced an end to the one-child policy, allowing each family to have two children.
Marriage rates fell not only in China but also globally, especially in the affluent Western countries.
But no country or territory tries to adjust its population policy the way China did when it enacted the one-child policy.
The tradition of favoring men and women in Chinese families has resulted in sex differences, especially in rural areas.
Demographic change is not enough to explain the cause of the serious decline in marriage rates in China.
In the 1990s, the Chinese government launched a nine-year universalization program that sent girls from poor areas to school.
"Educational attainment has improved, women are economically independent, so marriage is no longer a necessity as before," Yeung said.
Meanwhile, employment discrimination against women is still widespread, making it difficult for them to have both a career and a child.
"More and more young women are thinking: Why should I get married? What is worth looking forward to getting married?"
In addition, the pressure of work and long tiring working hours also leave young people without the time and energy to build relationships and maintain family lives, Li said.
Statistics show that both sexes delay marriage.
With Su, she often hears her friends complaining about the burden in her married life.
"Today, women's economic capacity has improved, so they can afford to live alone. If you find a man to marry and get married there will be more burdens and quality of life.
The increasing social and economic status of women also makes it even more difficult to find a suitable partner for both educated and high-income women and men with low education and income.
"Traditionally, Chinese women want to 'marry high', which means marry someone with higher education and income, while Chinese men want to 'get low'," Yeung said.
This concept persists, despite increasing women's education levels and incomes.
The values of love and marriage have also changed after a long way since China was first founded.
During the Great Leap Forward, China encouraged people to have as many births as possible, because the country needed a workforce to build its economy.
In 1950, China passed a new Marriage Law, forbidding arranged marriages and forbidding marriages, allowing women to divorce.
"During the Cultural Revolution, boy and girl love was often seen as a proxy for capitalism, something to fight against," said Pan Wang, expert on Chinese marriage at New South University.
Since then, Chinese society has changed many values and perceptions.
Social perspectives on cohabitation and premarital sex are also more open, as well as the prevalence of contraception and abortion, enabling young people to have more romantic relationships.
Star Tong, 32, once believed that romance, marriage and childbirth are what will happen to a girl over the age of 20. Worried about being single, she has attended 10 face-to-face sessions, mostly because
But none of them were successful.
"Now I realize getting married is not the only option," she said.
Tong said she felt encouraged to see society change the outlook for single women.
Since then, the term has often been controversial and has led online discussions, most of which criticize highly educated women for being too "picky".
During family reunions, Tong was often advised by relatives not to be "picky" when looking for a mate.
"I thought the word was offensive," she said.
Finance is also a factor that makes young Chinese people afraid to marry.
Not everyone needs to buy a home, but the social welfare system in China is built in such a way that home ownership becomes paramount for those who want to marry and give their children a good future.
Having a home close to a good school will give your children access to a high quality education.
Joanna Wang is a 24-year-old student from Chengdu, south of China.
"Everything when getting married is expensive, and I can't make any quick money to pay these things," she said.
Financial pressures don't just exist in big cities.
Before the population crisis, the Chinese government launched a series of propaganda policies and campaigns to encourage couples to have children.
After introducing a two-child birth promotion policy, the provincial government has extended the maternity leave period of over 98 days according to national standards, to a maximum of 190 days.
In 2019, some delegates of the National People's Congress, China's legislature, proposed lowering the minimum age for marriage to 18 for both genders.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Youth Union has commemorated the matchmaking, organizing dating events to help singles find a mate.
Last year, the Chinese legislature offered a period of "reconciliation" with those filing for divorce.
So far, no policy has helped reverse the declining marriage rate.
Li said he has observed a resurgence of more and more traditional gender roles in government propaganda policy in recent years.
"It has to do with many government plans, as well as how the government sees women and young women as social resources," she said.
"Today, the need to raise children and care for the elderly is increasing. With the current welfare regime, we need more and more people to take care of children and the elderly, and women can '
But Xiao, a women's rights activist, says discrimination against women in the workplace has also gotten worse since the loosening of the one-child policy, as employers fear more and more women.
When these issues are not resolved, the pressure on marriage and childbirth that the government places on young women further makes them alienate from marriage.
"The government needs to change the way of thinking and methods of encouraging women to give birth in terms of protecting the rights of women. They cannot consider a woman's uterus a faucet, like to open it open, like to lock it.
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