THE GLOBAL financial crisis is breaking hearts in more ways than one. Now foreign men are losing their pulling power as potential husbands for Chinese women, matchmakers say, because they are seen as lousy savers.
The proportion of women willing to marry a foreign man has slumped from 43 per cent to just 17 per cent, according to a survey by Shanghai-based matchmaking website www.hongniang.com. And 68 per cent would now prefer to marry a Chinese man as a first choice, compared with 53 per cent before the crisis started.
“The change reflects the fact that Chinese women prefer a stable lifestyle,” Fang Fang, who works as a matchmaker at the website, told the China Youth Daily.
“The idea that you save money before you buy things is deeply rooted in Chinese minds, while abroad, because of the highly developed personal credit system and the impact of spending habits, the ‘overdraft culture’ is a universal phenomenon,” she said.
In the three decades since China began readmitting foreigners after its isolation under Chairman Mao, foreign men in particular have been quite a catch because of their generally higher income levels and the fact that they offered a chance to leave the country.
Now that competitive advantage in the marriage market has eroded sharply by revelation after revelation of financial incompetence and breathtaking indebtedness from the supposed bastions of fiscal supremacy.
Chinese families typically hoard 45 per cent of their income to pay for a rainy day, and rising incomes and living standards mean the gap between Chinese and foreigners is not as big as it used to be.
“The reason many women do not want to marry foreigners is they are worried that their life abroad would not mean any improvement,” said a matchmaker in Fuzhou, in Fujian province.
The survey, which takes the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September last year as a starting point, shows that 6,600 women who were married to foreign husbands reported an average happiness rating worth 72, which had fallen to 54 post-crisis.
Ms Chen, a 36-year-old divorcee from Fuzhou, was set on marrying a foreigner because she thought life abroad would be better for her and her daughter, and her aunt introduced her to a nice German.
“But now I am worried. The economic situation abroad is bad; and layoffs, bankruptcies are quite common.
“Coupled with lifestyle and cultural background differences, this marriage could be very difficult to sustain,” Ms Chen told her local paper.
She has decided to go for a local husband instead.