In this episode, Malcolm and Simone dive deep into the surprising marriage trends in China, exploring why so many men are opting out of marriage despite a surplus of single women. From cultural expectations to economic pressures and social shifts, we break down the data, stories, and theories behind this demographic puzzle.

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Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00 ] hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing marriage in China, which has a very interesting phenomenon in which women, now everybody knows for a long time. You know, the China, because of the one child policy. People didn't want girls because they couldn't carry, carry on the family name.

They couldn't, you know, take care of you as easily when they're older, et cetera. And so they would find ways to have boys which meant there was a huge extra amount of boys in China.

Simone Collins: Right, right.

Malcolm Collins: So you would think the demographic that is having trouble finding a partner is boys. Right. That would be my assumption.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: So I'll go over how bad things actually are in the opposite direction. We will then get into the common explanations people have, why I don't think they're good, and what a good explanation is.

Simone Collins: Ooh. So

Malcolm Collins: at an event in 2025, this was a Shanghai matchmaking event, [00:01:00 ] a mass matchmaking of it in Shanghai had nearly 1000 women who paid a 601 entry fee to attend, but fewer than 50 men showed up. Ouch. 600 women to 50 men organizing. It just seems like a

Simone Collins: bad marketing thing though, don't you think? No,

Malcolm Collins: No, because you'll see that this happens a lot. Organizers noted that when a single man did appear, he was swarmed like a minor celebrity with women rushing to compete for his attention.

In some cities, similar events have reported zero male attendees, despite hundreds of women waiting. Gosh,

Speaker: In Shanghai, there are plenty of unmarried women coming to my matchmaking events, but hardly any unmarried men nowadays, it seems that for every one Shanghai men, there are several or even over a dozen women competing, and the women are really desperate. It's not that they don't want a partner. If there are no men, how can they find one?

So now whenever one man shows up, everyone rushes for him. This has been going on for a long time. A few months [00:02:00 ] ago, Shanghai held a rather special matchmaking event with an interesting rule. Every woman had to pay 600 UN while men could attend for free, the women expected a flood of male participants, but to everyone's surprise, nearly a thousand women showed up while fewer than 50 men participated.

Malcolm Collins: the Gong Zg singles fair in 2024, a government sponsored single fair in Gozo had over 8,000 women registered, but only 40 men attend, resulting to a 20 to one female to male ratio.

Simone Collins: What is going on, especially considering the population

Malcolm Collins: skew?

Yeah, the, the, the 20 to 25 assault women lining up. To meet the few men present was organizers noting that the men were quote unquote overwhelmed and left due to the intense attention. I can't take all these women done, women get away. My

Simone Collins: God,

it's raiding women.

Malcolm Collins: In the Chong J Blind date market this was in 2023.

[00:03:00 ] Okay.

In Chong j, a park based matchmaking event organized by parents saw a significant gender imbalance with, of the 158 profiles posted, 70% were for women. My Lord, in Beijing's Valentine's Day event, 2024, a Valentine's Day matchmaking event in Beijing, organized by a local marriage agency, drew 600 women, but 25 men, making it a 24 to one ratio.

Now. Here you might be saying, well, it's because men don't wanna get married anymore in China. So we're gonna go over two polls, right? Okay. One poll done by the 2021 Communist Youth League survey found that 44 percent of Chinese women do not plan to marry, but only 25% of men plan to not marry. So actually men want to get married in almost double the rate of women.

And another poll showed that around 75 to 80% of. Urban women under 30, oh. This one showed women slightly higher. Okay. Plan to get married. 30 to 60 to 70% of men.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So in some polls you see it, but it [00:04:00 ] seems that it's either around the same or men dramatically more than women want to get married.

Sure. So what the f is going on here, right? Yeah. And to give you an idea of how important this is demographically speaking, because people don't realize how modern this phenomenon is and how quickly things are are dropping. Mm-hmm. So in 2024, the number of registered marriages in China hit a record low.

Since records began in 1980, falling to 6.1 million couples a. 20% drop from 2023. Oh. So 2023 to 2024 is a 20.5% drop. And it's already in 2024 at less than half the number of marriages that there were in 2013.

Simone Collins: What is happening,

Malcolm Collins: number decrease. And if, and if we go sort of year by year to show how quickly this is dropping.

Between 2023 and 2024, you had a 20.5% drop. Then by, what was it? H 1 1 20 24. The first half you had another 12.7% drop. Then in the second half there, there's an

Simone Collins: acceleration taking [00:05:00 ] place. 'cause I just figured everyone is thinking this too. So I'm just gonna say it. Oh well because for men in China, it's too expensive to get married.

But no, something new is happening. This is new. Yeah. It doesn't really

Malcolm Collins: explain it, so. Yeah. Yeah.

I can, I can go and we'll read into some of the explanations, but the first thing that everyone always says is, well, in China there's this huge stigma against women who are too old. Right. Or women who are, you know, women are supposed to get married young.

Yeah. What are they called? Leftover women. Career oriented. Yeah. Yes. It's leftover woman trope, and it's like. Even if this stigma were true, okay, the high valued men would secure because like. Sleeping around culture in China and stuff like that, like the problems we have in the us this isn't really that common in China.

To give you an idea of what I mean when I say it's rare for women in China to sleep around, , one study showed that in China, , for women ages 20 to 44 only, , 6.5% reported two or more lifetime partners, [00:06:00 ] sexual partners. That is.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Like the, it's, it's not common to just like date around and sleep around and, you know, the Chad roller coaster whatever thing, right? With the Chad carousel? The cock carousel? No, it's the cock carousel that, that's not, that's not what's happening in China. Oh. So what would happen, right, if, if the problem was, is that men just had a preference for, you know, younger women.

The men who were able to secure the younger women, like the women who were actually sane enough to secure their partner while they were still young, would be securing these women. But then the other men, it's not like they disappear. For every woman not marrying more than one man isn't marrying because there's more men than women in China due to the reasons we talked about before.

So the men who were left over would, would it still sort of trickle sort to these lower value older women mm-hmm. Rather than be alone, but they are choosing to be alone and then people can be like, oh, well it's that, and we'll talk about this.

'cause e economics does play a role. There's like, there's a lot of economic expectations on men to get married in China, like having a house paying bride price, et [00:07:00 ] cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And it's like. Yeah. Except the problem isn't that women are being too snooty around these men. Right. It's not If they're

Simone Collins: swarming them at these news Yeah.

That

Malcolm Collins: the men aren't showing up in the first place.

Simone Collins: Oh, they're going, he gig, go worry.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I mean, they're, they're just not showing up to the dating events at least. Right. Okay. So yeah. But like in general

Simone Collins: too, if

Malcolm Collins: they were there, like even if they were a lower valued man, presumably they'd have an arbitrage opportunity.

Simone Collins: Yeah, totally.

Malcolm Collins: So to continue here so, and, and to the surplus of men, they have about 30 to 35 million extra men of marrying age.

Simone Collins: So what's, whoa, what is going on? Let's,

Malcolm Collins: let's go over some wrong theories. Okay. But that I think are interesting and worth throwing out there and talking through.

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