China Changing Marriage Law to Increase Birth Rates

In this episode, we delve into China's new policies designed to tackle its demographic decline. We discuss recent changes to marriage and divorce laws, their implications, and how the population is reacting to these changes. We explore the easing of marriage registration, the controversial 30-day cooling-off period for divorces, and the shift in property division laws in favor of the paying spouse. We also touch upon China's broader strategies to increase fertility rates, such as providing financial incentives and lowering the legal marriage age, and analyze their potential effectiveness and social impact.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are going to be going into how China is attempting to deal with its demographic catastrophe it's going through, and one of the ways is through changing how marriage and divorce work in the country. And we had seen a tweet that briefly covered some of the changes that they had in this area.

But I wanted to go a lot deeper than this particular tweet into the specifics of how things are changing. How people in China are reacting to it and why they think it might work, ready to dive in, or any thoughts? We go further. I'm intrigued this would happen. We're like, look, people are going to, what's interesting about these changes is I think many red pillars would probably like a lot of them.

So we'll see how this goes. You know, they're, they're not all the worst. Oh, okay. W Marriage registration. The revised law proposed in August, 2024 and effective as of February, 2025 removes regional restrictions on marriage registration, allowing couples to register [00:01:00] anywhere in China without needing to return to their household registration.

Kuku locations. This simplifies the process aiming to encourage marriage amid demographic crises. Now, it sounds

Simone Collins: like marriage before then must have been uniquely difficult one on earth. Is this like needing to return to.

Malcolm Collins: This is actually a really interesting point. So, in China you are like sort of owned by your starting district often and to, to move to a new area, it can be quite difficult and require permission from the central government, almost like changing citizenship.

Yeah, almost like changing citizenship. And if you're like a migrant worker or something like that, you often need to go back to your home area for certain like legal things. What's really fascinating about this is where this relates to religious history. Oh. A lot of people like modern, historians and stuff like this have said that they do not believe that Joseph had to return to his hometown during the census. Because they're like, that doesn't make sense. [00:02:00] How could a Roman census work where literally everyone who had ever moved at some point in their life had to return to their hometown at the same time for a census?

And I think what they're not taking into consideration is one. We see this in other countries like China, even today, basically. Yeah. And two not as many people moved in those types of environments where your legal standing was in large part, tied to where you were born. Probably in the Roman Empire or something like that.

If you moved too far from where you were born, somebody could just take you and say you're their slave, right? Like, there, there, there wasn't a lot you could legally do. So it was quite dangerous. To move long distances during those time periods and try to live somewhere else, unless your job was trading and if you were a trader, you'd have guards and stuff like that.

And it was quite a different thing than just like moving. But anyway, I, I find that to be a good thing. They are loosening bureaucratic bloat.

Simone Collins: 100%. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: China's marriage rate has plummeted with only 6.1 million marriages [00:03:00] recorded in 2024. A 20.5% drop from 2023. Year over year, it dropped by over 20%. And this was the lowest since 1986.

This decline coupled with low birth rates, has prompted the government to promote family friendly policies, quote unquote, family friendly which is wild. Divorce proceedings. The 30 day cooling off period first introduced in 2021 under China's civil code is retained and emphasized in the 2025 revision.

Couples filing for divorce by mutual consent must wait 30 days during which either party can withdraw the application effectively halting the process. Wow. If no withdrawal occurs, they must reapply within another 30 days to finalize the divorce. Otherwise, the application is automatically withdrawn and canceled.

Simone Collins: Oh, so just adding friction to the process. They're, they're reducing friction to get married, adding friction to get divorced.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. [00:04:00] And obviously a lot of people are freaking out about the what, like what if he's abusive? Well, we'll get to that because it sounds like they haven't thought of that, but anyway.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: This period has significantly reduced divorce rates reported 70% drop in the first quarter of 2021. Wow. From 1 million to. 296,000. However, it has sparked criticism for delaying or preventing divorces, particularly in cases of domestic violence, despite exemptions for such cases. The point being is that there are actually exemptions for those cases not a bad law to implement here in the us.

People would go absolutely panic mode if they did, but yeah, it would. Anyway. Critics argue the cooling off period undermines personal autonomy with one Weibo user stating it's easy to get married, but hard to divorce. What a stupid rule, a sentiment that garnered tens of thousands of likes. Why? Why would that be a stupid rule?

Why would a government who prefers people being married not want it to be easy to get married and hire a divorce? That's [00:05:00] why if you look at the executive orders we submitted for the Trump administration, we wanted to. Reduce any tax ties for marriage. A government should always prefer people to be married.

Married people are like just strictly better than non-married people. They commit less crimes, they make more money. They are more stable. Economically speaking. They make for better parents. They like in every metric. You as a government would prefer to have more of your population married. Any thoughts before I go further?

Simone Collins: I agree. Well, I would also add that kids are a lot better off when they have two parents to support them. So yeah, I mean, it's tough. Obviously it's complicated, and then when there is abuse involved, or if a parent is incredibly toxic and putting the kids in danger, it's a very different situation. But yeah, I think being too flippant about both getting married and getting divorced is not a good thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, ownership based on payment. The 2025 law reportedly shifts property division to favor the spouse who paid for the asset, [00:06:00] even if both names are on the title. Ah. This marks a departure from the previous norm of equal division of marital property. For example, a husband purchased a property in later added his wife's name to the deed, would retain full ownership upon divorce.

Oh, that's gonna piss off women a lot, but it is very sane as a, I like, I don't understand why that wouldn't be the norm everywhere. Like, I understand this. Yeah. Well,

Simone Collins: I mean, it, it really, really, really disincentivizes people from getting divorced when they feel like doing so will protect or enable them to just live a financially independently, there will be less financial misaligned incentives.

Malcolm Collins:</