Chinese men defy Communist party to marry foreign wives

The detrimental effects of China’s ‘one child policy’ are playing out and Beijing does not have effective answers to address them.

The Chinese embassy in Bangladesh recently called on its citizens to not look for Bangladeshi brides, even stating, “do not even consider marrying in Bangladesh”.

This statement forces one to ponder the long-term impact of China’s ‘one child policy’, implemented from 1980 to 2016. The declining birth rates and fears of China becoming older before it got richer were the primary drivers for scrapping the policy. It was further relaxed to a three-child policy in 2021. This, too, could not stop the declining birth rates.

The ‘one child policy’ changed China in multiple ways, which now seem impossible to undo.

The policy skewed China’s gender ratio. China, being an Asian and a patriarchal society, has a preference for the male child. This, along with the ‘one child policy’ in place for four decades, has led to a warped gender ratio where it is expected that around 30-50 million ‘leftover’ Chinese men will never get married between 2020 and 2050.

Declining birth rates pose yet another challenge. Chinese women today marry late or choose not to marry at all. This, coupled with the rising cost of bearing and raising children, is contributing to the declining birth rates.

A skewed gender ratio and rising cost of living mean that men in China face a dual problem: one, not enough women to marry, and two, the rising ‘bride price’ (a Chinese tradition of where men give betrothal gifts to women). Government efforts to address these two challenges have been ineffective.

This has forced many men to ‘buy foreign wives’. This is not a recent development, but it gained renewed attention after it was conceived as an immediate solution for China’s declining marriage numbers and the gender imbalance by a Xiamen University professor.

Given the high demand, there is a booming illegal industry where women from countries like Myanmar, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Laos, Cambodia, and other Southeast Asian countries are lured to China with the promise of better jobs and life, and eventually ‘bought’ for $5000-20,000.

Beijing considers these marriages illegal as they violate the Chinese Foreign Marriage Law. The law demands that marriages must be registered within China, and as China does not have the policy of dual citizenship, anyone marrying a Chinese citizen has to give up their passport. Such marriages violate the law as the idea of consent is missing, and are illegal in the purview of the Chinese government.

That said, given the huge demand, Beijing has not been able to check it. Another reason could be that tough measures might lead to large-scale resentment and even unrest.

The ethnicity question

These ‘foreign wives’ pose another challenge for the government — one that of the ethnicity of the wives and the children born to them.

China is primarily a Han-majority nation, and in the long term, the children from these marriages could potentially give rise to a new social and ethnic category. Given that Chinese history is not very welcoming of mix-race people, their future and identity will be at the mercy of the Party-State.

The ‘one child policy’, which was introduced to ensure that China becomes an economic and developed power, has created a roadblock to that aspiration. The dwindling population is impacting employment, consumption, retirement, and economic growth. The second- and third-degree impact of the policy will cast a shadow over China in the long term. The Party-State, under Xi Jinping, is more concerned about its survival than the society and well-being of the people — and that will only further complicate delicate problems of this nature.

(Gunjan Singh is Associate Professor, OP Jindal Global University.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.