Cities across China recorded a clear uptick in marriages in 2025, with Shanghai reporting its highest number of marriage registrations in a decade and Suzhou’s Gusu district seeing an 88% year‑on‑year increase. Shenzhen registered a 28.54% rise—its largest five‑year single‑year jump—and provincial data from Sichuan, Fujian and Jiangxi also show pronounced increases. The numbers have reignited public debate about whether China’s long‑term decline in marriages and births is reversing or merely experiencing a short, concentrated rebound.
Two straightforward explanations account for much of the rise. On May 10, 2025, a revised Marriage Registration Ordinance removed household‑registration (hukou) limits and allowed “nationwide handling” of marriage paperwork, making it administratively easier for couples to register outside their home jurisdictions. At the same time 2025 was a “double li chun” lunar year—regarded in popular belief as auspicious for weddings—and the calendar after the dragon year effect of 2024 (which pushed some couples to marry earlier) made a rebound more probable.
But the headline numbers conceal broader social dynamics. Chinese parents and policymakers have fretted for years about declining marriage and fertility rates, and the recent surge has been read by some as a hopeful sign. Yet those who study family formation caution that administrative and cultural incentives are unlikely to override deeper economic calculations: housing costs, stagnant wages for many graduates and the high price of childcare remain decisive constraints on decisions to marry and have children.
Younger adults face long job searches, precarious early careers and the expectation that marriage will be followed by home purchases and childbearing—burdens that many are unwilling to pass on to another generation. The article cites a resonant cultural line from the novelist Eileen Chang that has reappeared in public debate: if bringing a child into the world only perpetuates toil, panic and poverty, then not giving birth can be an act of kindness. That sentiment captures why a marriage registration uptick does not automatically translate into higher fertility or greater family stability.
Policymakers therefore face a tricky distinction between procedural fixes and structural reform. Removing hukou barriers reduces friction and may benefit migrants and cross‑provincial couples, but it does not directly lower housing prices, expand affordable childcare or stabilize insecure labour markets. Without targeted measures addressing the economics of childrearing—subsidised childcare, housing supports for young families, reforms to labour‑market precarity—marriage rates could revert to the long‑term downward trend once the one‑off calendar and regulatory effects fade in 2026.
For international observers the case is instructive about the limits of administrative nudges in the face of deep economic pressures. The 2025 spike illustrates how law and folklore can temporarily compress family‑formation timing; it does not yet refute the demographic challenges that preoccupy China’s planners. If Beijing is serious about reversing fertility declines, it will need sustained, material policies aimed at the costs and risks that young people factor into decisions about marriage and parenthood.