[Big read] From Egypt to Russia: Chinese men looking overseas for love

“I swore I would never marry a Chinese woman. I was hurt too deeply, and now I really can’t stand them.”

Thirty-year-old Wang Xing from Xi’an shared with me his painful experiences of looking for a partner. In the end, he gave up on Chinese women and became dead set on finding a foreign spouse. 

His efforts were not in vain: in April 2025, he finally found and married 22-year-old Egyptian woman Mennatalla Ashraf Abbas Ahmed. We arranged to meet at the dormitory where the couple now lives, at the Pujiang Industrial Park in Jinhua, Zhejiang, near the factory where Wang works.

Wang said he left home to make a living before graduating from high school. Back then, he went to great lengths to court girls. He bought an electric scooter to ferry them around, and in winter he bought thermos flasks and gloves to show that he cared — but never got the chance to give them away. “I was already earning 6,000 RMB a month then (about US$871). I quit smoking, I didn’t drink, I had no bad habits, but they just did not fancy me at all.”

He revealed that he was once “blinded by love”, sinking into depression and self-harm after a breakup. As he spoke, he stretched out his arm to show me the painful reminders of his lost love. “All knife scars, because of depression. Back then, I would curl up in bed shaking — that’s how bad I felt.”

A few years ago, when he went back to his rural hometown for Chinese New Year, Wang overheard his grandmother saying the family needed to save money to get him a wife. He felt deeply ashamed, and swore he would not marry a Chinese woman, making up his mind instead to find a foreign wife who would not require him to buy a flat or pay an exorbitant bride price.

“In the past, our family even had to buy cooking oil on credit. I hated myself for it. To make three generations suffer just for a flat and a car; would a marriage like that be a happy one? I set myself a goal back then: even if I didn’t buy housing, I would wed a wife.”

Wang turned to language-learning apps on his phone and actively made friends with foreigners online. Eventually, he set his sights on Mennatalla and won her hand. He did his calculations: return air tickets to Egypt, food and lodging, gold jewellery and bride price came to a total of 100,000 RMB. If he had married a Chinese wife, even without the cost of a flat and a car, it would have cost at least 300,000 RMB.

Before the wedding, Wang went through the formal process in Egypt to convert to Islam. As the only son in the family, his parents did not object to him taking a foreign bride in marriage. “They said that as long as I can get married and have children, that will be fine.”

For now, Wang does not want children. He plans to cycle the Silk Road with Mennatalla; they have already bought two bicycles. He said with pride that marriage has given him direction in life, and praised his wife for being a good person and not materialistic.

“I’m the one who always takes the initiative to buy stuff for her. When I see she doesn’t have clothes or snacks, I will buy them for her. There’s no need for a big flat; our dorm costs 500 RMB a month for rent, and we’re so happy.”

The dormitory was small, but there was a bathroom and a small kitchen. Wang and I sat on chairs, while Mennatalla sat on the bed. Sheets of paper with unintelligible writing were pasted on the walls. Wang laughed and said it was his wife’s “code book” — Chinese phonetics written in Arabic script.

Clad in sportswear, Mennatalla looked like a middle schooler beside Wang. With the aid of a translation device, she introduced herself — she left home to work at 15; she has three older siblings, her father is a carpenter and her mother a housewife, and they are divorced.

She has been interested in Eastern culture since she was young. As a child, she watched a film about an Egyptian man overcoming many obstacles to marry a Chinese girl. She was deeply moved by the film, which sparked a strong yearning for China in her. After falling in love with Wang, she hoped to get to know this great Eastern nation better.

Her first impression upon setting foot in China was “a beautiful country, with very little rubbish on the streets”. Wang interjected, “Developed, advanced, clean. In three words.”

Wang is very aware that China is not only more developed than Egypt, it also enjoys a higher international status. This was part of his strategy in seeking a foreign wife: the country could not be more developed than China, and the woman’s circumstances could not be better than his. He said his father forbade him from marrying a Japanese woman — in any case, he had no such chance, as “Japan’s a developed country”.

Perhaps because there are more and more men like Wang, a new trend has emerged in China in recent years: there are more men than women marrying foreigners. The earlier trend where more women than men married foreigners was first reversed in 2018, when foreign wives accounted for 56.4% of cross-border marriages in China, compared with 43.6% for foreign husbands. By 2024, men marrying foreigners made up as much as 70% of total cross-border marriages.

Even so, foreign spouses still make up only a very small proportion of China’s 1.4 billion people. According to figures compiled by some self-media articles, there were around 122,000 cross-border marriage registrations in China in 2024, accounting for only about 2% of all marriages registered that year.

China’s official statistics do not clearly record or publish the countries of origin of foreign brides in cross-border marriages. An unofficial chart widely circulated on social media platform Bilibili shows that as of 2024, the top ten source countries for foreign brides in China were: Vietnam, North Korea, Russia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Japan, Cambodia, South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand.

Among the top 30 source countries, ten are in Africa, including Egypt. Some analyses suggested that the most popular countries for Chinese men seeking foreign wives were shaped by a combination of three factors: geography, culture and economics.

About a year ago, 29-year-old Lu Zhenliang from Fujian married 22-year-old Indonesian woman Tasha Sakinah, and his experience somewhat confirmed the above analysis.

Lu and his wife are currently settled in his rural hometown in Pinghe County, Fujian. Through a phone interview, he told me that TikTok is widely popular in Indonesia, and many locals learn about China through the app. As China’s international standing has risen sharply in recent years, local Indonesian women did not have a bad impression of Chinese men.

He said that while travelling on Batam Island, he took the initiative to chat with Sakinah, who was working at the hotel reception. “Things went pretty smoothly. On our first meal together we made it official. We used a translation app on our phones and chatted for more than an hour.”

Sakinah said that in Indonesia she often came across reels about China on TikTok and Instagram. “I thought China was very beautiful, and Chinese people were very kind.” Lu would also forward her videos showcasing China’s magnificent landscapes. “I told her, you can get to know China more. It’s a beautiful country with deep cultural roots. She really started longing to see China, and I managed to ‘con’ her with my sweet talk!”

This “con” did not cost much: the bride price was only 20 million rupiah (US$1,186), a world of difference compared with the sky-high sums often demanded in China. However, Lu said he gives his mother-in-law pocket money every month.

Unlike the Muslim practice of polygamy in Indonesia, China follows a monogamous system and prohibits bigamy. Lu speculated that this might be one reason why some Indonesian women are willing to marry into China. He said that from the start, Sakinah repeatedly stressed, “You must have me as your only girlfriend.” He sensed a deep-rooted insecurity in her, a fear that her husband might one day take several wives.

Lu joined the military after finishing middle school, and later obtained a higher diploma via correspondence while serving. After leaving the military, he worked in sales in big cities such as Xiamen and Guangzhou. He once dated a Chinese woman who, after only a few months of knowing him, insisted on going back to his village for Chinese New Year. Once she collected red packets from his elders, she broke up with him when they returned to the city.

“She was too shrewd. I even paid 4,000 RMB for her phone on a trade-in deal, and bought her a MacBook. She still owes me 10,000 RMB.”

By contrast, Lu really appreciates Sakinah’s docility and simplicity. He said that when he noticed her worn-out shoes in Batam, he took her to a shopping mall to buy new ones. With a “buy one, get one” deal, two pairs of shoes cost only 120 RMB. They then had fried noodles from a street stall, and were perfectly content. “When you’re with her, you can feel she’s genuinely happy and not at all calculating.”

Evdokimova Daria, a 26-year-old Russian woman, speaks fluent Mandarin — you would even mistake her for a Chinese if you just heard her voice. She and her 34-year-old husband, Gao Shihui from Shandong, complement each other well: she is a “humanities girl”, articulate but impatient, while he is a “science and engineering man”, quiet and steady.

Daria is from Pyatigorsk in southern Russia, also known as the “City of Five Mountains”, while Gao’s hometown is Liaocheng in Shandong. Both are university graduates from rural backgrounds. They first met through an online language-learning app and, after four or five years of meandering, finally tied the knot last March.

The couple are now settled in Ningde, Fujian, so that Gao can get to work easily. The moment I stepped into their apartment, the warmth of Russian hospitality was immediately apparent: the table was laden with Shandong fruit and Russian chocolates, and even house slippers had been thoughtfully prepared.

Gao said that he had been especially curious about the mysterious cultures of the western regions from a young age. In high school, he even hoped to marry a girl from Xinjiang. Later, after watching Russian films and television dramas, he found Russian women particularly beautiful, and began hoping to find his ideal partner.

Daria, for her part, has deep ties with China. Her father was stationed on the China-Russia border during his military service, and her parents, believing that relations between the two countries would only grow stronger, encouraged her to master Chinese so as to open more doors for herself.

At her parents’ arrangement, she read Oriental studies at a Russian university in 2017 and made several short trips to northeast China to study the language, spending time in Suihua in Heilongjiang and in Qingdao, Shandong. Immersed in a Chinese-speaking environment, her spoken Mandarin improved rapidly. She also fell in love with Chinese culture and cuisine, as well as the tall men of the northeast.

Daria said, “After studying in China for a month, my eyes were opened — I realised how vast and fascinating the world is. Russians tend to speak quite directly and say whatever is on their minds, but in China I came to understand that you need to be mindful of many things when talking to others. Through exposure to Chinese culture, I also learnt a great deal about filial piety and respect for one’s parents, which truly changed the way I think.”

Her command of Chinese has opened up many more opportunities for Daria, enabling her to secure a number of translation jobs in Russia. She said gratefully: “Everything I have today has been given to me by China and by the Chinese language.”

However, after marrying into China, it has been difficult for Daria to display her language skills. As a foreign spouse, she does not enjoy the same treatment as Chinese nationals and cannot apply for a “green card” until she has lived in China for five years. Lawyer Huang Feiling noted in an interview that before obtaining a “green card”, it can be “quite difficult” for foreign spouses to secure a work permit.

Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that restricting foreign spouses from working is not uncommon internationally and is mainly intended to prevent people from entering into “fake marriages for real employment”.

He believes that the Chinese government should treat foreign spouses generally like everyone else, so that they do not feel discriminated against. However, there is no need to overtly encourage cross-border marriages, as this could make neighbouring countries worry that large numbers of their women would marry Chinese men, effectively shifting China’s bachelor problem onto other nations.

Yi said, “It is best to let things take their natural course. Economic exchange inevitably brings about the movement of people, and the movement of people in turn leads to cross-border marriages. In that case, China should take reference from international practice and relax some of its restrictions.”

Scholars interviewed summarise that a combination of internal and external factors drives Chinese men to marry foreign women. One, the motivation for Chinese men to “look abroad” mainly stems from the pressure of the domestic “bachelor crisis”. Academics generally estimate that there may be as many as 30 million bachelors in China.

Two, the pull for foreign women to “look East” mainly comes from their favourable impression of China, which in turn stems from the country’s projection of soft and hard power — economic hard power is extended abroad through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), while cultural soft power is spread internationally via social media platforms such as RedNote and TikTok.

Xue Song, an associate professor at Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies, said that in recent years Chinese culture has spread widely through short videos and apps such as TikTok and RedNote, exerting a very significant influence.

Xue, who specialises in Indonesian Studies, told Lianhe Zaobao that when Indonesians talk to her about Chinese cultural phenomena, even she is unfamiliar with some of the energetic Chinese boy and girl groups they mention. Historical palace dramas or “domineering CEO” series starring Chinese actors, when subtitled in Indonesian using AI and shared on TikTok, are extremely popular among young men and women in Indonesia. “Even Indonesian boys tell me they watch them day after day — they’re completely hooked,” she said.

Xue said that on social media platforms like TikTok, there are also many short videos positively portraying China’s economic development. In the perception of some Indonesians, there is not a strict distinction between Chinese nationals and ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, who are generally seen as relatively well-off. In this context, “some people may feel that marrying a Chinese person is very appealing”.

Viewed in the context of the BRI, Xue believes that the phenomenon of “marrying abroad” may have initially arisen largely from Chinese enterprises investing in Indonesia, with some Chinese employees eventually settling down and starting families locally. As Chinese culture spreads through various platforms and people-to-people exchanges increase, opportunities for Indonesians to marry into China have also expanded.

Li Mingjiang, an associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, also said that the rise in Chinese men marrying foreign women is closely related to China’s growing international appeal alongside its overall national development, as well as the expansion of exchanges with the Global South. Another important factor is the severe gender imbalance within China.

Are Chinese women’s materialistic tendencies and growing gender antagonism making it harder for men to find wives? Su Qin, a well-known Chinese writer who sparked the “new women’s studies” trend, does not agree.

She argues that the key factor is the significant rise in China’s living standards. Women hope that marriage will enhance their lives rather than leave them worse off than if they remained single, which in turn places significant pressure on men. She also noted that the practice of demanding high bride prices is largely confined to rural areas and third- and fourth-tier cities, and is generally not an issue in first-tier cities.

Su thinks rather than saying that Chinese women are materialistic, it is more accurate to say that both Chinese men and women today are becoming increasingly pragmatic and seeking better value for money in marriage and relationships — much like the Chinese e-commerce app Pinduoduo.

She said, from a male perspective, if marriage is treated as a task — merely to have children, without the need for intellectual exchange or for a wife to work — then marrying a foreign bride is indeed pretty good value for money.

“To put it plainly, as long as it’s more cost-effective, people are willing to accept it. It’s what you might call a ‘task-oriented marriage’: if I can complete this task at a lower cost, that’s great.”

Su heard a real-life case during a visit to Africa: an employee of a Chinese company in Tanzania had married a local woman. The bride price was less than 1,500 RMB, which the man considered a bargain, while the woman was also delighted, as bride price does not exist locally.

Su is not at all surprised that the number of Chinese men marrying foreign women exceeds that of Chinese women marrying abroad. After observing marriage patterns in various countries, she concluded that Chinese men hold a certain advantage in the international marriage market, and are particularly attractive to women from countries whose economic conditions are less than China’s. She argues that seeking a stronger partner is a basic principle of marriage — much as many Chinese people aspired to marry to the US, Japan, or South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s.

She further analysed that traditional Chinese values also make many foreign women willing to marry Chinese men. For example, domestic violence is widely regarded in China as unacceptable, and if one calls 110, the police will take the abusive man away. Chinese families also tend to have a wide network of relatives; if problems arise in a marriage, these aunts and extended family members may speak up for a foreign bride. In the eyes of many Russian mothers-in-law, Chinese sons-in-law rank first, as most Chinese men do not drink heavily and are willing to do housework, which is the opposite of many Russian men.

Marriage may not remain the same forever. Su advises foreign brides who marry into China to learn Mandarin as soon as possible, so as to integrate into Chinese society.

“China is a relationship-based society. If something goes wrong in your marriage, at least there will be people willing to stand by you. Otherwise, if you’re not financially independent and have no one to help, it’s rather tragic.”

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “性价比高还对我青眼相待 更多中国男性娶外国太太”.

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