The company eventually withdrew its notice after receiving a request for correction from the authorities.
According to the Chinese newspaper network and the U.S. Radio Free Asia (RFA) on the 17th, the Shandong Shun Tianhua Group in Inan County said in a recent in-house notice, “Unmarried employees aged 28 to 58 (including single people) should start a family and have children within the deadline to educate the pillars of the country and contribute to society.”
“It is filial piety that all employees work hard, start a family, and reassure their families,” the company said in a notice, adding, “We inform you to resolve your individual marriage problem before September 30, 2025.”
He added that if an employee does not get married by the first quarter, he will submit a letter of apology, and if it does not reach the second quarter, the company will conduct a review and if the requirements are not met by the third quarter, the company will terminate the labor contract.
The contents of the notice spread online and sparked controversy by once being at the top of the real-time search term for Weibo on local social media.
Netizens strongly criticized, “The company has no right to interfere in marriage,” “violation of labor laws,” “Good treatment, not coercion, to get employees married,” and “Close the wrong company.”
The company later said it had withdrawn the notice at the request of the local authorities in Inan County. “We have taken immediate action after receiving corrective instructions from the Personnel and Social Security Bureau and have abolished all regulations within the notice,” a company official told RFA.
The company said its initial intention was to encourage unmarried employees to put a certain amount of time and effort into their life lines, adding that it will strengthen internal management to prevent this from happening again.
In this regard, Fang Yuan, a commentator on current affairs, explained, “This case may be an internal demand for a company, but it may be an appeal for companies to take the lead in what is difficult for the government to pursue publicly.”
“One of the great characteristics of China’s state governance is to look at what the upper part likes and discover it, and if there is a policy impulse that is inconvenient to speak publicly, it is to voluntarily double down,” he told RFA. Recently, in China, as the low birth rate and the trend of avoiding marriage have intensified, the central and local authorities have come up with various policies, such as introducing various birth support measures and urging universities to introduce lectures on love and marriage.
Since 1980, the number of marriage reports in China has peaked at 13.469 million in 2013 and has fallen for nine consecutive years since 2014.
In 2019, the walls of “10 million pairs” were broken at 9.273 million cases, followed by a steep decline of 8.143 million in 2020, 7.643 million in 2021, and 6.835 million in 2022.
Last year, the Year of the Dragon, considered an auspicious year in China, saw a slight increase in the number of births in eight years to 9.54 million, but the total population declined for the third consecutive year as it was still below 10 million.
The decrease in interest in marriage and family-building in China is mainly attributed to China’s high parenting and education costs.
On top of that, the worsening economic situation in recent years has made it difficult for young people to find jobs, and even if they have jobs, they have become anxious about the long-term prospects, which is also reported to be the cause of avoiding marriage and childbirth.
EJ SONG
US ASIA JOURNAL
