Has China entered an 'era of being unmarried'?

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Following the low birth rate and hesitation to marry, China seems to be stepping into a so-called “era of being unmarried,” which has also been witnessed in countries like Japan and South Korea.

By 2015, the number of single adults in China had reached 200 million, more than the entire populations of Russia and the UK combined, according to a South China Morning Post report.

Many link that number to the decades-long implementation of the “one child policy” which caused a massive gender imbalance.

Professor Li Jinzhao from Beijing Foreign Studies University believed this is a “new trend,” but the single population in China is not as large as imagined, she said.

“200 million sounds a lot, but it's only less than 15 percent of China's total population.” Li said.

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Flora Liu, CEO of Joyview Education, doesn't think China has entered such an era. As a single lady of marriageable age, she expressed her considerations of being single at the moment.

“I want to be financially independent first before considering dating anyone. It's not that we don't want to get married, it's just we are not ready right now, considering the high [costs of living] and competitiveness in the job market. So we value self-development over intimacy,” Liu said.

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As an American lawyer and an “outsider,” Edward Lehman, managing director of a law firm named “Lehman Lee & Xu,” talked about why he thinks young Chinese people are staying single.

The traditional concept most Chinese parents hold onto for their children is “don't interact with the opposite sex” when they are young. Lehman explained, parents often care more about their offspring's scores and jobs, but once their children reached marriageable age, they turn to worrying about their marriage, he said.

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