Chinese Women Have More Choices in Marriage

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, August 25, 2003

Chinese Women Have More Choices in Marriage

Chinese traditional culture considered marriage and motherhood the only real option for women,but today, it's only one choice for many Chinese women.

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Chinese traditional culture considered marriage and motherhood the only real option for women,but today, it's only one choice for many Chinese women.

Miss Wei, 37, is still living on her own in Dalian city of northeast China's Liaoning Province. A graduate of a prestigious university, Wei opened her own company several years ago. Listing "driving, travel, and buying brand-name clothes", as hobbies, Wei said she was "very satisfied" with her current single life. She was not celibate, but did not want to compromise by getting married.

In China, more women like Wei choose to be single. In 1990, the capital city of Beijing had 200,000 singles. But currently, the number of single women in Beijing and Shanghai, the two biggest cities in the country, has surpassed 1 million.

The latest statistics from the All-China Women's Federation show that in the past five years registered marriages have decreased year by year, dropping in 2002 by 1 million on the number in 1998. Meanwhile, 1.2 million couples divorce every year, leaving many women single mothers.

"Though not all of them feel happy with their single status, they indeed have the choice to stay single," said Zhang Sining, a researcher with the Liaoning Institute of Social Sciences.

In addition to choosing to be single, more women delayed getting married and giving birth, or chose not to have children at all.

Horizon Survey and Index Network carried out a sample telephone survey recently on 1,031 residents aged from 18 to 60 in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Wuhan cities. The result shows that compared with 1997, 11.3 percent less people questioned chose to have just one child, while 1.1 percent more people chose not to have children, and 3.9 percent more preferred to stay single.

Society gives women sufficient space to make their own choices and to decide their own destiny, said Jiang Yongping, Chinese women's affairs specialist.

Jiang said economically-independent Chinese women did not have to rely on their husband to buy houses, cars or clothes and society provided women more opportunities to join in social life.

Bao Qianyi, a 28-year-old teacher in the Foreign Economic and Trade University, has been married for four years. Bao and her husband have decided not to have a child.

"Marriage and motherhood are no longer obligations for women, but a status women can choose," said Bao, adding that she did not want anything, even a child, to disturb the harmony of her relationship.

Zhang said China was in a period of social transition, in which different cultural information was clashing to produce different moral values.

"But no matter what women choose to be, society is more tolerant of their choices," said Zhang.

But men viewed the diversification of marriage choices differently. Though many of the male respondents recognized and accepted the trend, most preferred the more traditional thought that "marriage is the best end-result for women."

Cao Yudong, a Ph.D student in the China Institute of Social Sciences, said that although he could accept the thought of diversified life styles, he himself had no intention of marrying a woman with such radical ideas.

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