Nepal crackdown against cross-border bride matchmaking by Chinese brokers

Beijing: Nepalese authorities have intensified a crackdown against illegal cross-border matchmaking following revelations that brokers and online intermediaries marketed Nepali women as potential brides for Chinese nationals, a Chinese media report said. 

The crackdown against “bride buying” intensified after Nepal’s immigration officials last month found several young Nepali women living in rented apartments with Chinese nationals in the capital, Kathmandu.

The Chinese men admitted to filming the women and sending the videos to friends in China and sharing them on social media, though they did not explicitly state the purpose of the recordings, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

Authorities deported four Chinese nationals for visa violations, saying there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges over allegations that the women were being coerced into marriages in China.

The Chinese Embassy in Nepal also issued a New Year’s travel advisory cautioning its citizens against what it described as “bride buying” in the country, urging them not to trust matchmaking agencies and brokers blindly and stressing that deceptive or profit-driven cross-border matchmaking is illegal under Chinese law.

“Fully understand the legal, cultural, property division and child custody risks involved in cross-border marriages,” the notice said. “Do not easily believe in cross-border matchmaking … stay away from illegal marriage brokers.”

The warning, posted on Friday, follows a series of recent cases in Nepal that have drawn attention to suspected illegal matchmaking activity involving Chinese nationals, as well as a broader shift by online brokers towards South Asia, the report said.

Some matchmaking agencies were charging between 5,000 yuan (USD 713) and 188,000 yuan (USD 26,830), marketing the process as “simple and easy”, the report quoted Chinese media.

“In recent years, several Chinese citizens who came to Nepal to find wives through illegal matchmaking agencies have been arrested on suspicion of human trafficking, child marriage, rape and other crimes,” the Chinese embassy said in its statement.

China’s demand for overseas brides is often linked by researchers to its skewed sex ratio, which official figures put at about 104 men for every 100 women.

The imbalance, shaped over decades by birth control policies and a cultural preference for sons, has left millions of men struggling to find partners. Some turn to paid matchmaking services that claim to help facilitate marriages abroad.

Activists and authorities say such services often exploit young women in poorer countries, promoting marriage as a pathway out of poverty while obscuring legal, financial and personal risks.

Women and girls from Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam have previously been trafficked and sold as wives in China, the report said.