'Marriage is like a gamble': More and more young Chinese refuse to tie the knot

Some younger Chinese have expressed their growing reluctance to get married. Some even welcomed the drop in the number of people tying the knot for the first time in China.

The South China Morning Post cited the China Statistics Yearbook 2022 reporting 11.6 million first-time marriages last year, nearly 700,000 less than the year before. This was significantly less than the 2013 peak of 23.9 million.

According to official statistics published early this month, China's population has decreased for the first time in 60 years, with a record-low national birth rate of 6.77 births per 1,000 people. The population in 2022 dropped by roughly 850,000 for a population of 1.41175 billion. This marks the first decline since 1961, the last year of China's Great Famine.