China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs released a dismaying report Saturday on marriage registrations, finding them down by 6.2 percent year-on-year for the first quarter of 2026 – and down by almost 50 percent compared to a decade ago.
The first-quarter report was particularly gloomy because January through March is usually the busiest time of the year for weddings in China, thanks to the Lunar New Year and Spring Festival holidays that bring families together.
The marriage bust was the latest bit of bad demographic news for China, which has experienced record-low birthrates and population decline for the past four years.
The Communist dictatorship seems baffled, and increasingly anxious, about its inability to reverse the demographic decline. A panoply of incentives for getting married and having children has been introduced, to no avail.
China, like many Asian cultures, has very low rates of pregnancy outside of marriage, so the
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