[Big read] Marrying without love? China’s youth say yes to new marriages 

In April this year, 33-year-old Beijing film producer Fang Qing (pseudonym) made a bold move: she publicly posted an ad looking for a marriage dazi (搭子, buddy) on social media platform RedNote. Unlike most people looking for love, her demand was straightforward: no dating, just marriage.

Her post was straightforward: “Looking for a marriage buddy. We’ll live independently, manage our own finances — but come together for holidays, special occasions and some married-life tasks when needed.”

To her surprise, nearly a hundred interested responses flooded the comments. Over the next two months, she replied to each one, narrowed down the options, and met with five “candidates”. She eventually found one whose values aligned with hers — she had found her ideal partner for marriage.

She said, “We respect and admire each other, although these don’t necessarily lead to love.”

In Chinese society, where marriage holds a dominant role, new forms of marriage that emphasise negotiation, autonomy, and equality have been emerging in recent years. The search for a “marriage buddy” is one such pragmatic, needs-driven form of marriage, which netizens call pin hun (拼婚, cooperative marriage).

These marriages, based on mutual agreement rather than romance and maintained with a good deal of independence, feel more like efficient partnerships than traditional unions. Posts seeking such arrangements are now common on Chinese social media platforms.

Fang’s marriage match is just a year older and works in Beijing. Over the past three months, they have often had meals or gone to the movies together, but she admits that there has never been any romantic tension. “Honestly, every meeting is about observing whether he meets the criteria for marriage,” she said.

Outsiders may find it hard to understand — if there is no love, why get married at all? Some even question whether this counts as a fake marriage.

Within China’s LGBTQ+ community, gay men and lesbians marry someone of the opposite sex, albeit without romantic feelings, to meet social expectations. This “marriage of convenience” (形式婚姻) has been a longstanding practice. However, the phenomenon where more heterosexuals are also entering into cooperative marriages is a more recent trend.

As someone who does not see the need for marriage, Fang’s decision to find a marriage buddy was motivated solely by her elderly grandfather, who had raised her, but has now fallen seriously ill. When she visited him during the Spring Festival this year, he expressed his wish to see her married before he passed.

His words touched a soft spot in Fang. “In the past, I would have brushed it off. But now that he’s bedridden, I can’t persuade him to accept my thinking anymore,” she shared.

Fang has had two serious relationships and once considered marriage, but both relationships ended. Now, she has revived her marriage plans and is preparing to marry her marriage buddy within a year. They have already met each other’s families and, aside from a fabricated story about how they met, she says everything else about their story is true.

Fang does not feel sad about marrying for the sake of her elders. However, she is frustrated when others question whether her marriage is fake. She said, “I feel that it’s my duty to make my elders happy. Pursuing my own life doesn’t conflict with fulfilling family expectations.”

According to her plan, her married life with her marriage buddy will follow what was stated in her post: living separately, respecting each other’s privacy, and only appearing as a couple when necessary. Since her partner wants children, she does not rule out having kids, but stresses that the primary responsibility for raising them would be on him.

Fang said, “Marriage is essentially about finding a life partner to cooperate with and requires both parties to honour contractual obligations. Marriage is just like finding a business partner.”

Negotiation and equality are key features of such marriages — even when romantic. One such example is the increasingly common “AA (equal-share) marriage” model that has emerged alongside women’s rising economic status.

Lü Fang (pseudonym, 32) is a staunch supporter of this AA marriage model. She and her husband are civil servants, each earning a monthly salary of about 10,000 RMB (around US$1,392). They carefully divide household expenses. For example, when it comes to raising their two-year-old son, her husband covers formula milk and outings, while she pays for clothes, diapers and other daily necessities.

The most unique arrangement between them is having a penalty system. Lü explained that if one partner goes out for leisure while the other stays home with the child, the person going out pays a 100 RMB hourly “fine” to compensate for the other’s time and effort.

Lü says it is like buying your partner’s time and energy, helping the one who stays home feel appreciated. “Isn’t it worth spending a little for peace? It’s like paying protection money!” she joked with a laugh.

Some critics see AA marriages as overly calculative, reducing spouses to business partners. But Lü believes that it eliminates one of the main sources of marital conflict — money. Now three years into her marriage, she says she and her husband have barely argued.

She even feels that this AA marriage model has helped her fall in love with her husband all over again. “When he uses his own money to treat me to a fancy meal or buy me a gift, I would think: he spent his own living expenses on me. Isn’t that lovely?”

Lü said that her views on marriage were shaped by her legal education in university, particularly the principle of equal rights and responsibilities. Growing up, her mother also taught her to earn her own money and never rely on marriage to change her life.

She knows she is lucky — her husband is “not chauvinistic at all” and values honesty, which makes their equal arrangement work.

“These practices are all about staying happy together,” she said. “At the end of the day, he’s the man I love — not a business partner.”

The “gender equality” seen in an AA marriage model is also seen in a newer form of marriage known as “two-sided” marriage (两头婚).

Originating from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, two-sided marriage advocates the idea of neither “marrying in” nor “marrying out”, with both families being regarded as equal. There is no exchange of bride prices (彩礼) or dowries (嫁妆) between the brides’ and grooms’ families, and each partner maintains close ties with their natal family after marriage.

Typically, couples in a two-sided marriage have two children — the firstborn takes the father’s surname, the other the mother’s.

Two-sided marriage has gained broader attention in recent years and is gradually becoming commonplace outside of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. One key reason is the impact of China’s one-child policy. As many only children born in the 1980s and 1990s reach marriage and childbearing age, their parents — reluctant to see their child marry in or marry out, and eager to preserve their own family name — see two-sided marriage as a way to balance the interests of both families.

Shen Danlei, a 37-year-old from Zhejiang, is in a two-sided marriage. She and her husband have a son and a daughter — the son takes his father’s surname, Zhou, while the daughter takes hers, Shen. “The kids don’t think it’s strange to have different surnames — their classmates have the same situation,” she shared.

What resonates the most with the young couple in the two-sided marriage is the arrangement to live with both sets of parents. Unlike couples who move out to live on their own, or where the woman moves in with her husband’s family, Shen and her husband chose to live with both families together, with eight people of three generations living under one roof.

Shen’s husband Zhou said when interviewed that the advantage of a two-sided marriage is that it combines the strengths of both families to support their new, small family.

He explained, “We have two children, and both sets of grandparents can help look after them. My wife is an only child, so there are no issues of sibling rivalry, and relations are simpler. My mother-in-law is also quite affectionate towards me, and she basically helps with everything at home.”

Shen is glad she chose a two-sided marriage and finds it a more relaxed way to get married. It eliminates the complexities of traditional marriage customs such as bride prices and dowries, and she would not have to leave her natal family. She shared, “If I moved in with my husband’s family, I might feel like an outsider. Being able to live with my parents gives me a greater sense of security.”

She joked, “Living with my mum makes me feel like I’m still a child. I can lie around and kick my feet up whenever I feel like it.”

A more open and honest negotiation process that simplifies traditional marriage customs and does not assume fixed family roles — the emergence of new marriage forms such as cooperative marriage, AA marriage and two-sided marriage is inseparable from the rise of female consciousness and individual awareness.

Gui Fangfang, a partner at Beijing Merits and Tree (Shanghai) Law Offices, has encountered many cases of cooperative marriage and two-sided marriage in recent years. Gui said in an interview that new forms of marriage grant women a greater voice. Cooperative marriage, for example, represents a societal compromise while reflecting the idea that “women must have a voice to have the right to negotiate”.

Gui explained that Chinese women previously had little bargaining space in marriage, but today’s society, especially men and elders, is increasingly accepting of women doing so. Hence, although cooperative marriages may seem imperfect, it is nonetheless an expression of women’s rights and a reflection of societal progress.

Regardless of gender, people today place more emphasis on autonomy in intimate relationships. Lu Jiehua, a sociology professor at Peking University, said in an interview that traditional marriages were based on kinship, blood ties and geographic connections within a close-knit, familiar society, whereas in today’s “society of strangers”, individual independent choice naturally holds greater importance.

Fang Qing, who is seeking a cooperative marriage, believes that traditional marriage forms no longer fit the social habits of young Chinese today.

She felt that the older generation of couples could stay together for decades because in those days, social interactions were limited; in contrast, the post-90s and post-2000s who are born in the internet era, can connect with others through many channels.

“I think what is more ideal would be having a buddy for every activity, including marriage — there is no need to place all expectations on one partner,” she said.

There are many youths like Fang who resist the traditional marriage system — but the fact that they ultimately choose to enter a marriage is a reflection of how marriage as a form of living arrangement still holds an irreplaceable position in Chinese society.

Qi Huan (pseudonym), a 30-year-old teacher from Inner Mongolia, is currently mired in such a contradiction. Since 2021, she has gone on over 100 blind dates arranged by her family, but still falls short of finding a mutually satisfactory partner. In July this year, she took a new step by posting on RedNote to find a marriage buddy.

In her post, Qi wrote that she is “tired of the tug-of-war of traditional dating and yearns for a cooperative relationship with defined boundaries.” She hopes to enter a cooperative marriage with a military officer posted abroad, as this would mean that they would not have to meet too often — he would only need to regularly provide for family expenses. 

The setbacks of arranged dates and the pressure from family and friends to marry have left her disillusioned with love. She griped, “The greatest significance of marriage is that it makes me appear to be a normal person.”

The broader policy direction has also created a sense of urgency. Faced with plummeting marriage and birth rates as well as an ageing population, many local governments in China have introduced measures to encourage marriage, including marriage bonuses, red packets and consumption vouchers. All these signals made Qi feel that if she were to remain unmarried, she would “really seem like a misfit”.

Sociologist Lu believes that today’s youths are making their own marriage choices in an environment where traditional and modern concepts intersect. Regardless, in a society with deep Confucian cultural roots, the mainstream marriage model would prevail — albeit subject to influences from different cultures, such as the Western-imported AA marriage.

Lawyer Gui Fangfang took a positive view of this rise of new forms of marriage. She believes that the young hope to meet social needs while also retaining some degree of independence. Hence, the new forms of marriage are actually their “indirect protection of individual freedom”.

She commented, “Everyone is adapting to social changes while hoping to meet personal needs. There is nothing definitively good or bad about these new forms of marriage; as long as the relationships are managed well, it’s a good thing.”

New forms of marriage better align with some young people’s expectations for intimate relationships, but the opposite of freedom and independence are loneliness and alienation. Hence, these marriages can be fragile in the face of real-world challenges.

Gui, who has encountered divorce cases among those in cooperative marriages, pointed out that such marriages “can be strong, yet extremely fragile”. They are strong because there are no emotional expectations from both parties, yet fragile because such a marriage is a compromise from the very start.

She noted that the collapse of financial commitment is one of the triggers for marital breakdown. If there were disputes over the ownership and rights of property in a cooperative marriage, “the spouses become very concerned, because housing may be the be all and end all to the foundation of their marriage”.

Moreover, there is the issue of childbirth. Gui pointed out that marriage partners might initially agree not to have children and inform their parents accordingly; but according to her, there have been cases where husbands secretly sabotaged contraceptives in a bid to make their wife conceive, eventually leading to disputes over child-rearing responsibilities.

Even with a prenuptial agreement, disputes are unavoidable. She explained that prenuptial agreements mostly involve financial arrangements, making it difficult to regulate other aspects of daily life.

As for two-sided marriages with emotional foundations, these kinds of marriages face another set of risks. A Zhejiang marriage intermediary who wished to remain anonymous said that two-sided marriage couples are traditionally expected to have two children, with the first taking the father’s surname and the second the mother’s. However, some couples today are unwilling to have two children.

Shen Danlei shared that she has seen instances where, after the first child was born, both the husband and wife insisted that the child take their own surname, leading to family discord on both sides.

Sociologist Lu is concerned about whether the spread of new forms of marriage would weaken the caregiving function of families in the context of China’s ageing population.

Lu gave the example of how in AA marriages, where spouses emphasise equality and independence, the question of how to support each other’s parents comes up, and even how the couple would care for each other in the future is also a key issue.

He pointed out that traditionally, elderly people move in with their children when they become physically dependent in their old age, but new forms of marriage may challenge this caregiving model, and even potentially create new issues that would require longer-term observation.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “中国女性与个体意识当道 谈婚嫁也有甲乙方 枕边人如同合伙人”.

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