Why many parents "rely" on dating apps.

As marriage rates decline, China's dating app industry capitalizes on growing parental anxieties.

Trung Quốc: Lý do nhiều cha mẹ 'cậy nhờ' ứng dụng hẹn hò

Couples visiting the Shenzhen Wedding Exhibition in March 2023

Chinese parents are turning to a range of new online matchmaking services where they can create dating profiles and set up first dates for their unmarried children.

For over 1.5 years, Wang Xiangmei, a retired worker in Zhejiang, China, has used three different dating apps to find the perfect husband – not for herself, but for her 28-year-old daughter. On the apps, Wang, 52, set criteria for her prospective son-in-law such as: a bachelor's degree, at least 1.73 meters tall, under 33 years old, from a well-off family, with a good character, and from a family with a tradition of mutual support and affection…

Mrs. Wang believes that her daughter urgently needs a boyfriend before all the good men are snatched up by other women. According to Mrs. Wang, her daughter should also have children when she is strong enough to help raise them. However, so far her single daughter has not made any move, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Desperate parents in China like Wang are turning to a range of new online matchmaking platforms such as Perfect Son-in-Law, Family Matchmaking, and Parent Matchmaking, through which parents create profiles to advertise their children to potential suitors — sometimes without their children's consent. After the matchmaking is complete, the parents get to know each other first.

On matchmaking apps, parents advertise their unmarried children to other parents by listing the children's age, height, and income.

Although arranged marriages have become rarer in China, parents in the country still arrange potential partners for their children—often through professional matchmakers or at marriage markets. In recent years, as China's marriage rate has declined, anxious parents have increasingly pressured their children—often only children due to China's previous one-child policy—to marry, have children, and continue the family lineage.

China's dating app industry has tapped into growing parental anxiety by offering online matchmaking services. Many parents have discovered these matchmaking apps through advertisements on Douyin—a sister app to TikTok. Users pay a subscription fee to view profiles and unlock contact information. For example, a basic subscription on the Perfect In-Laws app costs 1,299 Chinese yuan (US$181) for a lifetime.

Statistics show that it's unclear how many parents are using matchmaking apps. The matchmaking app from gaming company Perfect World claims to have over 2 million users and has facilitated over 53,000 marriages since its launch in 2020. Meanwhile, the app from online dating giant Zhenai.com also boasts millions of users.

Compared to dating apps targeting young people, such as Tinder or Momo, China's largest dating platform, matchmaking apps aimed at parents place a much greater emphasis on users' financial information. Information such as salary, car and property ownership, and workplace (public or private sector) is prominently displayed on user profiles.

The Parent Matchmaking platform also hosts daily live sessions where parents call in to discuss their children's profiles with a professional matchmaker.

Sybil Wu doesn't share her mother's enthusiasm for matchmaking. Her mother, 50, from Zhejiang province, paid 299 yuan ($42) for a one-year subscription on Parent Matchmaking. Initially, she only used the app for fun, but soon realized it was actually possible to find someone for her graduate student in Beijing. Sybil Wu's mother's standards were very strict: he had to be handsome, at least 175 cm tall, born before 1999, have a master's or doctoral degree, and own an apartment.

After finding a prospective partner, Wu’s mother and the boyfriend’s family discussed their children’s career plans and exchanged photos of them on the messaging app WeChat. Some parents asked her mother if Wu had attended a top high school. Others said they only wanted virgins—a request her mother refused.

Wu said she had messaged the man her mother found through the app, but the relationship didn't work out. According to Wu, "There's no way it worked. It was entirely up to the parents to choose their preferred in-laws."

The controversy surrounding these matchmaking apps highlights the growing gap between young people's views on marriage and their parents'. Kailing Xie, an assistant professor at the University of Birmingham who studies marriage and gender in China, says that because young Chinese people often rely on their parents' help to acquire property and raise children, parents want to ensure their children marry to serve the best interests of the family. With China's previous one-child policy, many parents are increasingly anxious. “The children’s affairs are also the parents’ affairs because they are often seen as the family’s sole hope,” Xie says.

But parents and children sometimes have different expectations about what marriage should bring. “Parents are trying to control the selection process based on material standards,” Xie says, “while the younger generation may be more interested in intimacy with another person.”

In contrast to their parents' generation, young people, especially women born in the 1990s and 2000s, are increasingly choosing to marry later in life. This year, the marriage rate has fallen to its lowest level in more than three decades. According to a 2021 survey, about 44% of young urban women in China surveyed said they had no plans to marry, with many worried about the financial costs of raising a family.

Elaine Yang, daughter of Wang Xiangmei and currently a teacher in Hangzhou, said she sometimes argues with her mother on the phone because her mother constantly pressures her to get married early. Yang said that although she sympathizes with the social pressure her mother faces for having an unmarried daughter, she is currently happy with her single life.

Despite Yang's objections, her mother is planning to register for matchmaking apps and arrange dates for her through online matchmakers. "I don't know what's wrong with young people these days," Wang said. "I had a child when I was 25."

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