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China population: marriages fall in latest blow to Beijing’s push for couples to have more children

  • Jiangsu province saw the number of marriage registrations drop for a fifth consecutive year in 2021, with a 5.16 per cent fall compared to 2020
  • It is the latest blow to China’s plans to encourage more couples to have children after the number of births dropped for the fifth consecutive year in 2021

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In China, the number of marriage registrations in the first three quarters of last year dropped slightly from the first nine months of 2020, but it was 17.5 per cent down from the same period in 2019. Photo: AFP

Fewer Chinese people chose to get married last year, while on average those that did postponed the age at which they tied the knot, further adding to the population crisis stemming from a plunging birth rate.

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The number of marriage registrations has been declining since 2013, while data recently released by a number of local authorities confirmed a continuation of the downward trend.

It is the latest blow to China’s plans to encourage couples to have more children after the number of births dropped for the fifth consecutive year in 2021.

In the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, the number of marriage registrations dropped for a fifth consecutive year in 2021, with a 5.16 per cent fall compared to the numbers seen in 2020 confirmed by the Jiangsu Province Civil Affairs Department.

In the city of Hefei in the eastern Anhui province, the number of couples getting married in 2021 dropped by 4,065, or 6.6 per cent compared to a year earlier, which represented the seventh consecutive yearly decline since 2014.

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