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‘Getting married is like going to hell’: why more young Chinese are falling out of love with tying the knot
- A report about the drop in marriage rates started trending over the Lunar New Year holiday, a time many people visit their families
- Social media users said they were put off by the high costs of marriage and increasing difficulty of getting divorced
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Fran Luin Beijing
The decline in the number of people in China getting married for the first time has been welcomed by some younger Chinese, who signalled their growing reluctance to tie the knot.
They said the increasing costs of marrying and raising a family, and changes to the law to make it harder to get divorced, all acted as deterrents.
The number getting married for the first time dropped to 11.6 million last year, almost 700,000 down on the previous year, according to the China Statistics Yearbook 2022. This was well down on a peak of 23.9 million in 2013.
This downward trend is likely to be mirrored by a further fall in birth rates, which reached a record low of 6.77 births per 1,000 people last year, as the population fell for the first time in six decades, according to official statistics.
Although the marriage figures were first published in December, a report about the statistics became the most searched item on the social media network Weibo on Wednesday – a time when most people were visiting family during the Lunar New Year holiday.
Posters hailed the “wise” decision made by young people, and said they too would not be getting married.
One user wrote: “Marriage is like a gamble. The problem is that ordinary people can’t afford to lose, so I choose not to take part.”
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