Cinderella tale loses luster

Li Danning, a bride in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, enjoys her wedding ceremony combining Chinese and Western customs with her British bridegroom. CFP

Not long ago, young women in China thought marrying a foreigner would gain them financial security and a visa.

That was then.

Now, Eva Hong, who has been living with her French boyfriend in Marseilles for two years, says she is going to dump him if he can't find a good job.

The job market in Marseilles was saturated before the global financial crisis, she says; now it is even more difficult to find a job.

"It's impossible for me to support the two of us if he cannot get a secure job," said Hong, 25, who has been working as an intern at a French trading company since getting her MA last year.

There is no doubt the global financial crisis has made foreign husbands less attractive to Chinese women. An online survey conducted recently by hongniang.com, a major Chinese matchmaking agency, found that the number of women interested in marrying a foreigner has plunged from 42.5 percent to 16.8 percent since last year.

The economic slowdown is even affecting those who have already married.

Ma Na, a 26-year-old Beijinger who recently married a Finn, said she and her husband are not planning to start a family for at least five years.

"We are still young and our current financial situation does not allow us to have a baby because we could not provide him or her a superior quality of life," said Ma, who now lives with her husband in Tampere, the third-largest city in Finland.

Ma, who graduated with a double major in business and international management, said she is learning Finnish and hopes to run a trading company with her husband when the economy improves.

In China, young couples often receive financial support from their parents, either to pay for their wedding party or to put a down payment on a house. But those who marry a foreigner are usually on their own.

"It's very likely that I will move to France once we get married. We'll have to buy our own house and car, with little support from my parents," said Carrie Cheng, a 23-year-old graduate student in the United States who recently became engaged to her French boyfriend.

"I worry about life in Paris, where strikes are so common these days and the immigration policy is getting tougher," Cheng added.

Although marrying a foreigner may not guarantee financial security, young women in China's big cities continue to look for foreign husbands.

China-wife.com, a matchmaking and marriage-consulting agency based in Shenzhen, has seen an expanding market in international marriages since it went into business in 2003.

"The financial crisis has not had any effect on our business so far. In fact, we have seen a growing market over the past few years," said Peter Zhang, an employee with the company.

Zhang said the company now has over a hundred clients. Most of them are urban Chinese women in their 30s who have white-collar jobs, live in coastal areas, and are looking for foreign husbands.

"We provide services including locations where single foreigners like to hang out, dating skills, potential risks, and legal consulting on visa applications and immigration," Zhang said.

The service can also provide an interpreter, if language is a problem. Membership fees range from one thousand to several thousand yuan.

Chinese women who married foreigners in the 1980s and 1990s were often seen as gold diggers. But the young women who date foreigners today say it has more to do with personality and the status of women in the West.

"Foreign guys tend to treat their partners more equally and show more respect," said Liu Xiaoru, a 24-year-old white-collar worker in Beijing. "Male chauvinism is less common in Western countries."

While foreign husbands may be losing their allure, the "economy guy" is gaining ground with urban Chinese women.

First popularized on the Internet, the "economy guy" is one who is of medium height, looks plain and has no bad habits. He works for a government institution or State-owned company, makes 3,000 to 10,000 yuan a month, and has already saved enough to make a down payment on an apartment.

"A stable relationship with basic financial security is more important than anything else these days," said Liu Wei, a 25-year-old single woman who worked for a joint-venture company in Beijing.

"I'm not going to bet on a real-life Cinderella story," she said.

(China Daily 04/06/2009 page6)