March 17, 2025, 10:41 a.m. | Reading time: 5 minutes
For more than two decades, thousands of people have met every weekend in People’s Square Park in the Chinese mega-metropolis of Shanghai. But not to go for a walk or relax, but to find a suitable spouse for their children. This often happens without their knowledge. However, there is a sad reason why the bizarre marriage market is booming more and more. And this goes back to a fatal decision that the Chinese government made almost 50 years ago.
For more than 20 years, a place in the Chinese mega-city Shanghai has regularly been bursting at the seams on weekends. We're talking about People's Square Park, because China's most unusual dating site is located here. The word marriage market is even more apt, because week after week parents from all over the city come here to advertise and find a suitable marriage partner for their children. However, it is not uncommon for them to not have the slightest idea about it. And the fact that a civil partnership should be initiated in this unusual way has a sad background.
According to various sources on the Internet, the marriage market in People's Square Park has existed since 2004. For the equivalent of a few dollars, parents from the “Yale Review of International Studies” search for a life partner for their offspring using a simple paper ad. The “advertisement” contains all supposedly important personal data, such as age, height, weight and place of birth. Information about training and current employer as well as professional milestones and, last but not least, the candidate's star sign, or in rare cases the female candidate, are also important. Because there is a dramatic “oversupply” of male applicants on the marriage market.
Female offspring were rejected or killed
This circumstance goes back to what, from today's perspective, was a fatal decision that the Chinese government made in 1979. In order to counteract the threat of overpopulation, the “one-child policy” was established for the population. From then on, each family was only allowed to have one descendant, according to official regulations. However, since in Chinese society, at least at that time, boys had a much higher social status than girls, it was not uncommon for dramas to arise when parents rejected or even killed their female offspring. This went so far that at one point the government forbade doctors from telling expectant parents the gender of their child in advance.
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The consequences of this policy are visible every week in People’s Square Park in Shanghai. Today there is such an imbalance between men and women in China that, statistically speaking, many male bachelors will never be able to get married. In 2023, there were 31 million more men than women in China, and as the “German Economic Institute” reports, this dramatic development is likely to increase by 2030. By then, it is estimated that a quarter of China's male population will be unmarried. Yale University sees this as threatening the social stability of the entire population.
No country is aging as quickly as China
According to “Vice” magazine, the success of the marriage market in People’s Square Park also has another background. It has been a tradition in China for centuries for parents to arrange marriages for their children. This is usually intended to provide financial security for yourself and your new family and to maintain or, in the best case, of course, increase your social status. It is not uncommon for the parents of potential marriage candidates to meet before their children do. The author of the “Vice” article, herself Asian, also describes her own experiences. Accordingly, her father once arranged a lunch for her with the son of a business partner as a disguised date.
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The marriage initiations in People's Square Park are also problematic for another reason. It is not uncommon for children who have grown up in a more modern Chinese society to not want to get married at all. However, anyone who is not under the hood by the age of 30 is still considered an oddity in the country. As they are usually the only heirs in the family, the descendants are under enormous pressure. In most cases, a wedding is still a kind of insurance for relatives. The Chinese Central Committee officially ended the one-child policy in 2016. However, the consequences of this drastic restriction could still cost the country dearly in the future.
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Because of course the surplus of male population means a decline not only in weddings, but also in the country's overall population. There has now been a three-child policy since 2022 and, most recently, child benefit for parents who father more than one offspring. Nevertheless, China's population is aging and shrinking faster and more dramatically than any other in the world, as the "Spectrum of Science" reports, among others. Places like the marriage market in People’s Square Park are therefore, for many people, the proverbial last hope for the future.
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