The disappearing Chinese bride

“Love and marriage they go together like a horse and carriage” sang Frank Sinatra in 1955. This is no longer true in many parts of the world, including in recent years also China.

In a dramatic development, the number of both marriages and births have more than halved within a decade between 2012 and 2022. The trend is not stopping, as new data released by Ministry of Civil Affairs on Friday show. Only 4.7 million Chinese couples registered their marriages in the first three quarters of 2024, a decrease of 17% from the 5.7 million recorded in the same period last year. China will probably witness the lowest number of marriages since records began in 1980. At the same time, the number of divorces reached more than two million last year. The number of newborn babies was even the lowest in the history of the People’s Republic of China, with the number of birth per women sinking to from 1.80 in 2012 to 1.18 in 2022. In comparison, your humble editors new home Nepal saw a fall from 2.39 to 2.01 in the same period.

In China, love and marriage may not go together like a horse and carriage, but childbirth and marriage still do. Therefore, the fact that less young people are living in China as a result of the one-child policy which was in force until 2015, is not the only reason for these developments. Single girls in the family received more attention and better education, resulting in a generation of self-confident and comparatively well-educated young women, who do not want to become a housewife and mother in the still highly patriarchal society in China. The number of DINKIES (Double Income No Kids) is growing, but also the number of SINKIES (Single Income No Kid, or Single Cat Woman as former (and new?) President Trump called them), with rather the women deciding to stay single than the men. Government campaigns including blind dating events, mass weddings, and discouraging high dowry payments had no visible effects in times of high youth unemployment rising cost of living. A shrinking workforce will therefore encounter a growing aging population, with about a quarter of all Chinese already 60 years of age or older.

What does that mean for China’s outbound tourism? There will be less families with a small kid, but more of these families will have two or even three kids. There will be more single men and especially women, travelling in small groups of friends or colleagues, with more money to spend for themselves. There will be more would-be grandparents who are in fact without grandchild and can therefore spend more time and money on themselves and for travel.

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PS If you happen to take part in the UNITWIN conference end of November in Zhuhai or plan to visit the roadshow of NICE Nepal India China Expo on Dec. 2 in Guangzhou and Dec. 4 in Shenzhen, happy to meet you there!

As always, all best wishes from Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt and the entire COTRI INTELLIGENCE team, celebrating 75 editions of COTRI Weekly Editorial on LinkedIn!