Chinese authorities on Tuesday issued guidelines to combat the use of “high marriage dowries” in rural areas, the China News Service reported, amid falling marriages and birth rates.
The document, produced by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the State (Executive) Council, also identified “large-scale wedding parties” as another problem in mainland China.
The high cost of dowries, traditionally paid by the groom to the bride’s family, and wedding banquets, are identified as “obstacles faced by men seeking wives,” at a time when the number of marriages and the rate of birth rates in the country are in rapid decline.
The central government asked localities to “formulate rules to change customs, according to the conditions of each place” and to “enforce the application of regulations” in rural areas.
In recent years, some local governments have tried to counter the practice of dowry: a district in the central Chinese city of Fuzhou organized a group wedding for ten couples last September, with “zero dowry”. , which was broadcast live on the Internet to promote this type of marriage.
An official from the central province of Jiangxi, quoted by the official Global Times newspaper, guaranteed that the dowry in cities could be around 125,000 yuan (17,000 euros), but that in rural areas it is around 230,000 yuan (31,000 euros). euro).
In total, 7.64 million marriages were celebrated in China in 2021, the lowest number since 1986, when records began to be made.
This is a drop of 680 thousand, compared to 2020, and the eighth consecutive year in which the number of nuptial ties has decreased.
The average age of first marriage for Chinese women has risen from 22 in 1980 to 26.3 in 2020, according to a study by the China Family Planning Association and the China Population Research Center released Monday.
The average age at which women give birth to their first child in the Asian country is now 27.2 years.
In 2022, China suffered its first population decline in more than half a century. The country lost 850,000 people, a count that excludes the special administrative regions of Macau and Hong Kong and foreign residents. China thus closed last year with 1,411.75 million inhabitants, registering 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths, according to data released by the country’s National Statistics Office.
Source: TSF
