In China, marriage rates are down and ‘bride prices’ are up

The 30 women sat on wooden chairs, facing each other in a rectangular formation. At the front of the room was the hammer and sickle logo of the ruling Communist Party, with a sign declaring the meeting’s purpose: “Symposium of Young Single Women of the Right Age.”

Officials in Daijiapu, a city in southeast China, had gathered the women to sign a public pledge to reject high “bride prices,” referring to a wedding custom in which the man gives money to the family. of his future wife as a condition of engagement. The local government, describing the event earlier this year in a notice on its website, said it hoped people would abandon such retrograde customs and do their part to “start a new civilized trend.”

As China grapples with a shrinking population, officials are cracking down on a longstanding tradition of betrothal gifts to try to promote marriages, which has been in decline. Known in Mandarin as caili, Payments have skyrocketed across the country in recent years, averaging $20,000 in some provinces, making marriage increasingly unaffordable. Payments are generally paid by the parents of the groom.

To curb the practice, local governments have launched propaganda campaigns like the Daijiapu event, instructing single women not to compete with each other to command the highest prices. Some city officials have imposed caps on caili or even intervened directly in private negotiations between families.

The tradition has been met with increasing public resistance as attitudes have changed. Among the more educated Chinese, particularly in the cities, it is likely to be seen by many as a patriarchal relic who treats women like property to be sold to another household. In rural areas where the custom tends to be more common, it has also fallen out of favor among poor farmers who must save several years of income or go into debt to get married.

Still, the government campaign has drawn criticism for reinforcing sexist stereotypes of women. Chinese media, in describing the problem of rising marriage payments, have often depicted women seeking large sums of money as greedy.

After the Daijiapu event went viral on social media, a surge of commentators questioned why the burden of solving the problem fell on women. Some commentators urged officials to hold similar meetings for men to teach them how to be more equal partners in marriage.

In China, “as with most state policies on marriage, women are the central target,” said Gonçalo Santos, a professor of anthropology who studies rural China at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. “It is a paternalistic call to women to maintain social order and harmony, to fulfill their roles as wives and mothers.”

By targeting women, official campaigns like the Daijiapu event evade the fact that the problem is partly the work of the government itself. During the four decades of the one-child policy, fathers often preferred boys, resulting in an unbalanced gender ratio that has intensified competition for wives.

The imbalance is most pronounced in rural areas, where there are now 19 million more men than women. Many rural women prefer to marry men in the cities in order to obtain an urban household registration permit, or hukouthat provides access to better schools, housing and health care.

Poorer men in rural areas must pay more to get married because the women’s families want a greater guarantee that they can support their daughters, a move that could, in turn, plunge them further into poverty.

“This has broken up a lot of families,” said Yuying Tong, a sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Parents spend all their money and go financially bankrupt just to find a wife for their son.”

Officials have acknowledged their limited ability to eliminate a custom that many families view as a marker of social status. In rural areas, neighbors may gossip about women charging low prices and wonder if something is wrong with them, according to researchers who study the custom.

The tradition is also linked to entrenched attitudes about the role of women as caretakers in families. In parts of rural China, the payment is still seen as a purchase of the bride’s labor and fertility from her parents, the researchers say. Once married, a woman is normally expected to move in with her husband’s family, become pregnant, and be responsible for household chores, raising children, and caring for her in-laws.

But as the rising cost of living has exposed gaps in China’s social safety net, securing a high marriage payment may be a way for low-income families with daughters to save for unexpected medical bills or other emergencies. And with fathers living longer, some women demand higher prices as reimbursement for being the primary caregivers for the older generation, the researchers say.

Sociologists say a more effective way for the government to curb the tradition would be to put more funds into childcare and healthcare for the elderly.

As more young Chinese delay or avoid marriage altogether, their parents’ expectations about marriage payments are changing, said Liu Guoying, 58, a matchmaker in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province, which is known for the prices of brides that may exceed $50,000.

Parents eager to facilitate a good start to a marriage are increasingly passing the payment on to the newlyweds as a gift, he said. Some parents desperately want their daughters to get married, she said, who are willing to settle for less money as long as the soon-to-be son-in-law treats their daughter well.

“Pity on the hearts of the parents of the world,” Ms. Liu said.

A new generation of women, more educated than their parents, may also be playing a role in changing attitudes on the issue. A 2020 survey of around 2,000 people in China found that highly educated couples were less likely to pay the bride price, believing that loving each other was enough.

But even for women like 27-year-old Luki Chan, who went to college, an opportunity her mother never had, escaping the pressure of local traditions can be difficult.

Ms. Chan grew up in a mountainous region of Fujian, a province in southeast China where marriage fees are often high. Her mother expects to receive at least $14,000 from the groom when Ms. Chan gets married, she said, as payment for the money she spent on her education.

Now, Ms. Chan is building her own career in Shanghai as a theater producer and is in the process of registering for marriage documents with her Taiwanese boyfriend. Ms. Chan fears that when her parents find out about her, her demands for bride price will finally prevail. Ms. Chan he rejects the tradition, considering it tantamount to being sold.

“When I see the patriarchal system that exploits women and the misogynistic marriage customs, I am very afraid to talk about marriage with my family,” she said.

Officials see the generous payments as an urgent problem that could hamper economic development and trigger social instability.

Across the country, cities are trying to popularize the idea of ​​getting engaged without exchanging money. This month, local officials in Nanchang organized a free mass wedding for 100 couples to get married simultaneously inside a huge sports stadium, promoting the slogan: “We want happiness, not bride price.”

The couples dressed in red and gold traditional Chinese wedding attire, performing the ceremony in synchronized choreography. Their relatives watched from the stands, with local government officials taking the lead.

But in a sign of how long the custom persists, dozens of residents across China have complained to local officials on online message boards last year about the exorbitant marriage payments.

In a publication last summer, a resident said he was “begging” his local government to regulate marriage payments in his rural village of Baixiang, in southwest China, where many farmers live in poverty.

Three weeks later, county officials responded that they had sent a team of investigators to question the resident’s girlfriend at his home. She told investigators that her parents agreed to marry her off for around $40,000 and refused her pleas to lower the price for her. The groom’s family had only paid half so far.

After “great efforts on all sides,” authorities said, the bride’s father agreed to a payment of about $9,000 and returned the rest to the groom’s family. The reimbursement took place at the local Communist Party office, with party officials as witnesses.

The officials concluded their report with a message to the couple: “I wish you a happy life!”