Parents' marital preferences in China

Every Saturday in the Green Lake Park in Kunming, China, a "marriage market" takes place. Parents meet here to talk and look for a partner for their unmarried children. Sheets of paper on the walls of the park show their age, employment status and property they own. It’s also possible to consult the information of other participants or contact the marriage agencies on site. If this kind of practice is multiplying in the cities of the world's most populous country, with 1.4 billion inhabitants, it's because China is facing a social problem that was unheard of just a few years ago: the increase in celibacy and the decline in the age of marriage.

The formation of couples is one of the subjects explored by the economists, particularly through the study of dating sites. Researchers Eva Raiber, Weiwei Ren, Jeanne Bovet, Paul Seabright and Charlotte Wang highlight the importance of parental preferences in the process of selecting a spouse, while almost a third of couples married between 1980 and 2014 in China were introduced to each other by parents or relatives.

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They asked parents in a public park in Kunming (Yunnan Province) about their preferences for characteristics such as age, education level, income, ethnicity, and real estate ownership that they look for in potential partners by showing hypothetical profiles. They then compared these preferences with actual marriage outcomes in the general population and with the preferences of a group of students collected in the same way.

Social norms and the State carry a lot of weight

Marriage is traditionally considered extremely important in Chinese society and is still seen by parents as an essential step in adult life. Derived from the precepts of Confucianism, it is largely conceived as an agreement between families rather than between individuals. Until the mid-twentieth century, arranged marriages were commonplace. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949, it declared the equality of the sexes and the need for marriage to be based on the mutual consent of both spouses. It was no longer the family, but the party that laid down the rules for marriage. Until 2003, for example, couples wishing to marry had to obtain permission from their workplace. In the 1980s, the CCP wanted to reduce the country's birth rate. The one-child policy, implemented in the 1980, enshrined in law in 2001 and rigorously applied for over 30 years, limited most urban couples to one child (often two in rural areas if the first child is a girl).. As many couples prefer to have a son, this policy contributed to a significant imbalance between men and women. With almost 105 men for every 100 women in 2010, China has, after India, the highest sex ratio in the world.

Today in China, 240 million people live alone, or one person in six, according to the latest census in 2018. In 2022, the marriage rate reached its lowest level since 1986, with just 6.8 million ceremonies, according to official figures, 800,000 fewer than in 2021. In addition to the shortage of women, part of the new generation, contrary to their elders, no longer sees marriage as the ultimate family, social and economic achievement. Yet, single people, both men and women, are sometimes stigmatised. In 2007, the Chinese government officially introduced the term Sheng-nu (剩女; shèngnǚ, lit. « left-over women » ) into its lexicon, a popular derogatory term for single women over the age of 27.