The fathers and mothers of China who go to the parks with posters to “pair” their sons and daughters are getting their homework going uphill every day, because in these times in addition to not wanting to have offspring – which brings the Government upside down -, young people do not want to get married either.

The figures don’t lie: data released by the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs this week indicate that the number of marriages registered during 2024 fell to 6.1 million couples, the lowest figure since records began in 1980.

The decrease is also striking because it occurred, according to the lunar calendar, in the “Year of the Dragon”, the only mythological animal of the Chinese horoscope and a period so linked to good omens that couples traditionally scheduled their weddings or the birth of their children under this sign.

But now, in a country whose foundations rest on deep-rooted family values, the trend speaks of a youth that moves away from the millennial tradition quickly and without looking back, but who also, in many cases, does so to avoid the following “mandatory” steps of a list written in stone: having children and assuming the spouse’s family as one’s own.

“The cost of having a child is very high. I feel that life after marriage is not as good as when I am single,” Guo Shengnan, 27, tells EFE.

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This journalist and influencer on social networks also points out other factors, such as that her work career does not leave her time to fall in love and that “there are not many high quality men” in her environment.

“The marriage is not only the union of two people, but also the union of two families behind these two people, which means responsibility. I just want to live a good life for myself and I don’t want to assume those responsibilities,” says Guo.

The question of the family of law has special weight in the case of women. They are expected to take care of their mother-in-law in old age. And the mothers-in-law, in China, rule a lot.

Zhao (surname), a 37-year-old official who clings to his singleness after seeing his married friends “on the verge of collapse,” tells EFE that marriage “is not only the combination of two people, but also the combination of two families.”

“Differences in lifestyle habits, perspectives of life and opinions above all would drive me crazy,” says the interviewee, who affirms that his “patience and tolerance” for relationships every day are less and concludes: “marriage is not the crystallization of love, it can be the grave of life.”

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A walk through the crowded Chinese social networks confirms Guo and Zhao’s feelings.

“I have a younger brother. He can complete the task of getting married,” says an Internet user. Another refuses to “attend to men” and a third states that the purpose of getting married is to have children and since she does not want to have them, she does not need to get married.

In the case of men, economic reasons also arise, from the maintenance to the tradition of the dowry, which is still maintained in many places in a China where decades of one-child policy led to a gender imbalance, with many more men than women today.

“I don’t have a car, just a house in the countryside and a monthly salary of 5,000 yuan (688 dollars or 655 euros). I’m afraid that someone else’s daughter will die of hunger,” laments a user, while another drags an unpaid loan that prevents him from providing the dowry and one who boasts of having “house, car and life” believes that getting married will reduce his quality of life.

On the other hand, in many of the Chinese provinces babies born to unmarried couples cannot be legally registered, a headache for the authorities in the midst of a demographic crisis that has made China lose the title of the most populous country in the world at the hands of India.

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The population of the Asian giant, about 1,411 million inhabitants in the last census, has been decreasing for three years in a row for the first time since 1961, when the failed industrialization policy of the Great Leap Forward produced a famine that took millions of lives.

For now, the countless benefits approved by the Government to stimulate the birth rate – including “allowing” having three children – have fallen on deaf ears.