Across Chinese social media young people still joke about avoiding marriage and parenthood, yet an unexpected reversal has quietly taken hold: marriage registrations surged in 2025 after years of decline. While millennials and Gen Z are vocal about postponing traditional family life, local registries, cash incentives and administrative changes combined to push tens of thousands of couples to formalize their unions.
Official figures for the first three quarters of 2025 show 5.122 million registered marriages nationwide, up 405,000 pairs year-on-year, an 8.6% rise. Several cities reported outsized gains: Shanghai’s registrations jumped about 38.7% to a near nine-year high, Shenzhen rose 28.5%, Fujian province 12%, and some districts in inland cities posted modest increases. Forecasters now expect annual registrations to reach roughly 6.5–7.0 million pairs, a level similar to 2022.
Policy interventions explain much of the uptick. Two administrative reforms were particularly consequential: the abolition of the long-standing requirement to present the household-register (hukou) book at marriage registration, and the introduction of nationwide “cross‑handle” registration, allowing couples to register wherever they live rather than in their ancestral hometowns. Those changes make registering a marriage far easier for migrant and mobile urban couples and undercut the old, parent-mediated control of hukou documents.
The reforms disproportionately benefited China’s largest migrant destinations. Shanghai disclosed that 34,040 of its roughly 125,000 2025 registrations — 27.2% — were handled under the nationwide portability scheme, indicating a sizable pool of couples who would previously have had to travel home to wed. Shenzhen and other coastal cities with large floating populations registered similar surges, explaining why first-tier cities recorded bigger percentage increases than smaller, more stationary localities.
Monetary incentives and family-friendly leave policies complemented administrative levers. From January 2025 a nationwide annual subsidy of 3,600 yuan per child for children under three came into force — Beijing’s broadest direct cash transfer for infant care to date. Local governments topped up with wedding vouchers, one-off cash grants and housing-related incentives: Hangzhou issued 800–1,000 yuan vouchers to newlywed registrants, some Shanxi counties offered 1,500 yuan cash to first-time couples, and various localities increased mortgage support or provident‑fund loan limits for families with children.
Authorities also extended paid leave tied to marriage and childbirth. Sichuan, for example, lengthened marriage leave to 20 days and added five days for premarital health checks, while expanding maternity and paternity leave beyond national minimums in some cases. For cost‑sensitive, experience‑seekers among younger urbanites — many of whom value leisure and travel over immediate family commitments — such leave can be an effective nudge: it reduces the immediate opportunity cost of registering and celebrating a marriage.
Cultural quirks played a role but were not decisive. Superstitions tied to the lunar calendar — notably the “no-spring” taboo in 2024 and a double‑spring alignment in 2025 — likely shifted some couples’ timing, but historical patterns suggest superstition alone cannot explain the rebound. Other structural factors are more important: past declines in marriage mirrored earlier falls in cohort sizes caused by decades of low fertility, and as larger post-2000 birth cohorts reach marriageable age, registrations would be expected to rise regardless.
Crucially, however, more weddings do not automatically translate into more births. The statistical picture is nuanced: 2024 saw a sharp fall in first‑time marriages — the China Statistical Yearbook recorded just 9.17 million people entering first marriages, a 23% drop from the prior year and the first time in decades the figure fell below ten million. Official marriage counts also include remarriages and delayed registrations, so the headline rise in registrations may overstate the pool of newly formed, fertility‑ready couples.
Longer‑term barriers to higher fertility remain stout. Childcare and early education in China remain heavily privatized and family‑centred, with much of the burden falling on mothers. Women face career interruptions, wage penalties and workplace discrimination tied to childbearing; housing and education costs remain high. Attitudinal shifts among younger cohorts — greater emphasis on personal autonomy, career and consumption, and lower intrinsic desire for large families — further constrain the prospects for a rapid rebound in birth rates.
Policymakers therefore face a familiar trade-off: short‑term administrative tweaks and subsidies can nudge registrations upward, buying time, but reversing a deep secular decline in fertility will require sustained, systemic reforms. Enlarged and affordable public childcare, stronger protections against job loss for parents, tax and housing measures that meaningfully reduce the lifelong cost of raising children, and cultural shifts in workplace norms are prerequisites for turning marriages into births at scale.
The modest boom in marriage registrations in 2025 is a politically useful indicator that targeted policies can change behaviour quickly. Yet demography evolves slowly. If Beijing and provincial governments view the registration rebound as a policy victory, the next test will be whether they can convert that momentum into durable improvements in fertility by addressing the economic and social realities that deter young couples from having children.