China: CCP plays matchmaker to stave off demographic crisis

Beijing [China], March 24 : Countless Chinese couples registered their marriages on February 22nd, 2022, as the date comprises many twos, and is regarded as "Love Day", as the Mandarin phonetic ("er") is roughly similar to the word for love ("ai").
Despite a recent increase in weddings on this fortuitous day, China's marriage rate has been quickly declining, contributing to the country's wider demographic challenge. Concerned about overall social and economic volatility, the CCP has suggested several initiatives to increase birth rates, especially ones that focus on women's rights, although these alone aren't enough to entice more residents to marry.
The most significant hurdle is that several young people do not want to marry. The marriage rate in Jiangsu decreased by 5% for the time in a 5th consecutive year, according to provincial statistics. Almost half of all respondents cited the prohibitively high expense of having children and getting married as their reason. The South China Morning Post's He Huifeng highlighted findings that Gen Z women are less interested in marriage, as well as the economic implications of this pattern.
As per Liu Xin, creative director with an advertising agency "Live for yourself has become a go-to advertising campaign that many brands use to lure female consumers since a large number of women under the age of 35 only want to please themselves in terms of consumption and lifestyles," she further added, "Marriage and childbirth may not make them feel happier, in comparison."
There has been substantial opposition to the government's push to encourage young adults to start families, including a change in family-planning rules that would allow people to have three children. According to Shen Jiake, a renowned writer and independent commentator, for such measures to be effective, they need to make young women perceive as if parenthood will improve their rights and standard of living more than not having kids.
Consequently, he claims, such measures will fail to raise the population adequately as women are voicing their dissatisfaction with [China's] current marriage and birthing regulations through their real behaviours, as evidenced by the dropping fertility rate.
Shen stated, "This has led to an objective fact and trend that half - or a large number of families - stand on the side of young women's rights, in terms of attitudes toward marriage and childbearing". "Besides, the number of well-educated and financially independent young women has equalled or even surpassed that of men of the same age. All of these factors will result in the attitudes and values of young women having a huge influence on society, especially on population trends."
Due to China's one-child policy, a huge chunk of wealth currently belongs to young urban females. 50 per cent - or a significant number of families - support young women's rights, according to Communist Party head in Luanzhou, Hebei. As per AFP, CCP-sponsored matching activities enable people to meet in person and online.
The local Communist Party chairman in Luanzhou, Hebei, has established "matching spots" around the city of 520,000 residents and circulated registration forms containing personal information for matchmaking events.
A party-sponsored event in Jinan, China's eastern province of Shandong, drew over 100 individuals. Printed profiles of visitors indicating their ages, fields of employment, and wealth were strung up among trees at the event, which was held in a public park. While pop music played in the backdrop, a master of ceremonies assisted in the introduction of ice-breaking team activities.
A few government marriage initiatives, on the other hand, have backfired. The response to a fresh government initiative in Jiangxi to encourage "leftover women" to marry unemployed rural men was recounted by Ji Siqi of the South China Morning Post.
As per a report by Shanghai-based publication The Paper, Yihuang county in Jiangxi province is giving women and their partner's priority consideration in terms of housing and jobs, as well as maternity allowances. Equally controversially, officials are attempting to entice women to marry unemployed men by offering their spouses specialized and entrepreneurial training, business financing, and first preference for government jobs.
The plan has been panned online, with women asking why it was a concern if they didn't want to marry. Government plans of this nature have extended to other provinces around the nation. The Xiangyin county administration in Hunan revealed its proposal for "Operation Bed-warming" on its local CCP website, which would enhance matchmaking services and promotion to discourage local women from leaving rural regions. It was like a recommendation made last year by the deputy secretary general of the Shanxi Think Tank Development Association, which received a lot of flak.
Coercive tactics have also been used by the CCP to improve marriage rates. One strategy has been to make divorce more difficult, most notably through the new Civil Code's minimum 30-day "cooling off" period, which went into force last year. The divorce rate dropped by 70 per cent shortly after it was passed, and one year later, it is still substantially lower than in prior years. Domestic violence and violence against women have increased because of the legislation.
County court records in Fengxian county, show multiple rulings dismissing divorce requests by women who had been victims of human trafficking on the grounds of preserving family unity. Marriage regulations have also been linked to social stability aims, with the government pushing intermarriage in Xinjiang via both forced and voluntary ways.
In 2019, the government quadrupled the bonus points for children with one Han Chinese parent on the countrywide college entrance test, while having the extra points for children with both ethnic minority parents. In a more forceful example, one Uyghur survivor of Xinjiang's internment camps told VOA in 2020 that when a government official sought their agreement, her Uyghur neighbours decided to marry their daughter to a Han man; fearing jail, the family grudgingly consented to the marriage.
From 2018, there has been a noticeable increase in publications encouraging Han males to marry Uyghur women. During the "Two Sessions" annual legislative and advisory sessions, the CCP's ambitious demographic-related policy options were on full show. Delegates offered several policies to increase birth rates and encourage marriage.
Although not all these recommendations will become official policy, their inclusion demonstrates how significant they are to the CCP leadership, however, many people are sceptical about this attempt.