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Single rural Chinese men are having a hard time to find a wife..

GICexpat 2021-05-22


Rural men of marriageable age are having difficulties to find a spouse which is an increasingly visible problem in today's Chinese society, demographers and marriage experts found. China's latest national population census shows that there are 17.52 million more men of marriageable age between 20 and 40 than women.

This means that a large number of Chinese men may not be able to find a wife. 





Single men in rural villages and towns are struggling to find a wife, observers found. Some villages in lesser-developed provinces, including Shanxi, Shaanxi and Guizhou, were even dubbed as "bachelors villages" for their high population of single men. 

The few rural young women who do not flee to the cities then become the most precious resource in local marriage market. 

The high competition between men also pushed up the price of brides in rural areas, a kind of reverse dowry that men pay to the family of their future bride. The price of a bride in Jiaocun town was reported to be between 150,000 yuan ($23,295) and 200,000 yuan in 2017, and it "continues to rise by 10,000-20,000 yuan each year." 

Economic problem

To ease the financial burden on young people of getting married, regional governments across China are working on cracking down the inflated prices paid for brides. In Changzhi, North China's Shanxi Province, the bride price was limited no more than 50,000 yuan; in Shangqiu, Central China's Henan Province, the local government mandated that the bride must return a part of the money paid for the bride to the bridegroom's family, local media reported.

Some regional governments also tried to reverse the gender imbalance through attracting young women to the villages. 

Diverse marriages

Voices calling for more diverse forms of marriage are emerging. 

A "modern style of marriage" that is popular among single-child rural families in East China, for instance, caused heated debate on Chinese social media last December. In this kind of marriage, the couple lives apart, each with their parents, and, if they have two children, one takes the mother's family name and the other the father's.

Many people, especially women, have hailed this kind of marriage saying it focuses more on the rights of women, such as the right to give children their own surnames in a male-dominated society.

Additionally, demographers have raised calls to further ease restrictions on transnational marriage to encourage foreigners, especially women from neighboring countries like Vietnam and Cambodia, to marry Chinese citizens. "If foreign spouses are granted the rights enjoyed by Chinese citizens, more foreigners might be willing to settle in China," said Zhou Haiwang, Deputy Director of the Institute of Population and Development under the SASS.

Official data showed China's gender ratio imbalance kept decreasing slightly in recent years, dropping from 117.94 in 2010 to 110.14 in 2019. Liu Zhijun predicted that the problem of single rural Chinese men finding a spouse will be alleviated in the coming years with the adjustment of the birth policy and the further balance of the sex ratio.



Source:globaltimes

Editor: Crystal H

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