Youth organization to help more singles tie the knot

A man looks at information of prospective partners for his child at a dating event in Huai'an, Jiangsu province, April 30, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

Youth organizations including the Communist Youth League have vowed to help young people find love as the Chinese government puts the marriage issue on its agenda.

"Marriage is a big issue in the development of youth," He Junke, a senior official with CYL Central Committee, said on Wednesday.

More young people are marrying at a later age due to changes in life and work patterns, he said, and youth organizations including the CYL will work to solve the issue.

The announcement came after the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council jointly issued the Medium and Long-term Youth Development Plan (2016-25) last month, listing marriage as one of the top 10 youth issues.

The plan calls for more dating activities to be organized for young people, with priority given to older singles, and approaches taken to regulate the dating and matchmaking services market.

Chinese governments once advocated later marriages in order to control population growth. But the tide has turned.

In 2015, the country abolished the three-decades-old one-child policy and delaying marriage is no longer encouraged.

And more people are marrying at a later age. A report by the All-China Woman's Federation in 2015 showed that the marriage age for Chinese was 26 on average, which is older in developed areas.

According to data published by the Shanghai statistics bureau, the average age of marriage for Shanghai women was 26.5 in 2010. That had risen to 28.2 in 2013.

In 2015, the number of single people in China reached nearly 200 million. The proportion of the population made up by unmarried people more than doubled from 6 percent in 1990 to 14.6 percent in 2013.

He Junke said that the CYL Central Committee will work to cultivate a good environment for youth to find their loved ones, but the matter was essentially a private one, so singles should concentrate on making their own efforts.

As a bond linking the nation's youth with the Party, the CYL included about 88 million members and more than 3.87 million organizations across the country by the end of 2015. Its Central Committee exercises leadership covering the work of the CYL.