For a long time they seemed almost inseparable, my friend, her boyfriend and his college roommate. I would sometimes meet her or the college roommate on their own and she and her boyfriend spent the odd evening or weekend together but most of the time, it was the three of them.
After a childhood and schooldays that are strictly regimented with hours of homework starting at the age of eight, college life brings the first taste of freedom for many young Chinese people. Away from home for the first time and living six to a room in dormitories, the friendships they form are often the closest and most enduring of their lives.
For months I had been promising to have the three of them around for dinner but when I finally proposed a date just before the summer, my friend said there was a problem with her boyfriend’s roommate.
“I’m mad at him because he offended me and I don’t want to be around him,” she said.
I asked how bad it was and if our dinner might serve as a peace conference but she said she would not be able to forgive him for a while. The summer started without our dinner and we were not in touch for a while until I noticed a social media post from my friend.
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It showed a black-and-white Polaroid photograph of her and the boyfriend and he had liked the post, adding an image of a diamond ring. His profile picture was an image of my friend showing off a ring on her finger.
The boyfriend’s roommate confirmed that the couple were betrothed but he didn’t think there was a plan or a timetable for getting married. At 20, my friend is just old enough to get married as a woman under Chinese law but they will have to wait another couple of years until her boyfriend is 22.
Under the current rules, a couple wishing to get married must each present their hukou, or household registration document, as well as a personal ID and declarations that they are not already married. The hukou is issued at birth and it fixes a citizen’s residency based on where their parents live.
The hukou determines everything from the school you can most easily get into and the province where you sit the gaokao, or school leaving examination, to the size of your pension when you retire. Adult children usually share their parents’ hukou so the requirement to present it can give the parents an effective veto over their offspring’s marriage.
Under a proposed reform of the marriage law, couples would no longer have to show their hukou when getting married, a change the government hopes will encourage more people to tie the knot. Marriage rates have been falling in China for a number of years and after a brief, post-pandemic surge, the numbers have plunged again this year.
In the first six months of 2024, 3.43 million people got married, a year-on-year drop of almost 13 per cent and just half the number that wed in the same period a decade ago. Fewer marriages also mean fewer children but the government is eager to promote what it calls a fertility-friendly society.
Under the proposals, which are open to public consultation until September 11th, marriage would become easier but getting divorced would be more difficult. Couples wishing to dissolve their marriages would face a 30-day cooling off period during which either party could call off the divorce.
The reaction on social media has been mixed, with many welcoming the easing of marriage rules while warning that the new divorce rules could trap people in an unhappy marriage for longer than they want. But a strikingly high number of posts have been critical of the abolition of the hukou requirement, portraying it as a licence for gold-diggers to marry the unsuspecting for their money.
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“In future, young people will be able to deceive your inexperienced daughter to obtain a marriage certificate, human traffickers can take girls who have been abducted and sold to obtain a marriage licence now, a scumbag can deceive honest people into getting married, and your dad can now be pushed in a wheelchair by a scammer care worker to get his marriage licence,” one commenter said on Weibo.
Another agreed that old people living alone would be targeted but suggested that it was a deliberate policy aimed at redistributing wealth.
“China is ageing and in future it will be difficult to find heirs and redistribute huge social wealth,” the post said.
“The enormous wealth built up over the past 30 years of reform and opening-up has to be redistributed. This is it, one wealth redistribution at a time.”
One commentator complained that the government’s claim to be promoting marriage freedom was undermined by the proposal to make it harder to get divorced.
“What is freedom in a marriage where you can only enter but not exit?” the post said.