The number of marriages in China continued to slide last year as the country faced a worsening demographic crisis.
Newsweek reached out to the Chinese Foreign Ministry with a written request for comment.
Why It Matters
After seven years of decline, China’s birth rate ticked slightly upward last year, a shift analysts have attributed to the end of strict COVID lockdowns the year before and 2024 being a Year of the Dragon—an auspicious sign in the lunar zodiac.
But experts don’t expect the trend to last, and policymakers are increasingly worried about the strain on public health and pensions as a shrinking workforce is left to support record numbers of retirees.
What To Know
China, home to 1.4 billion people, recorded just 6.1 million marriages last year, a 20.5 percent drop from 2023 and part of a decade-long decline, new data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs shows.
The figure marks a 54 percent decrease from 2013. Meanwhile, registered divorces rose by 1.1 percent from 2023.
Associated Press
The news bodes ill for China’s birth rate, which—as in the rest of East Asia—is closely tied to marriage.
Since abandoning its decades-old one-child policy in 2015, China has expanded the number of births allowed per household to two, then three children, with central and local governments rolling out a range of pro-natal policies. Yet these measures have largely failed to counter shifting attitudes toward child-rearing amid the rising cost of urban living.
Lower-than-expected fertility rates in major countries, especially China, have pushed down the global total fertility rate to 2.2 births per woman. This is below the 2.4 that experts projected for 2024 back in 2013, according the United Nations‘ World Fertility Report.
A fertility rate of 2.1 is considered necessary to replace a population.
What People Are Saying
Xiujian Peng, senior research fellow at Victoria University’s Centre of Policy Studies in Melbourne, Australia, told Newsweek: “The younger generations work so hard. They don’t have much flexibility to raise a big family. Also, their attitude has changed on whether to have children or even get married.
“In China, women’s education level is [on average] higher than men’s. A lot of women achieve career success, so they do not want to have more children because it will affect their career development. And there is also discrimination in the labor market […] That’s another reason for the declining fertility rate.”
Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who conducts demography research, wrote on X: “If this alarming trend continues, [the number of marriages] will fall below 3 million by 2029, meaning that birth will collapse. The Chinese government’s political and economic ambitions will be ruined by its demographic Achilles’ heel.”
What’s Next?
These challenges are expected to drag on the world’s second-largest economy. The government has responded by calling for renewed focus on technologies like artificial intelligence and humanoid robots to help prepare for the shifting demographic landscape.
