China’s one-child policy has now generated a new industry – “The girlfriend” rental business. Chinese tradition is that a son (but not a daughter) will carry on the family heritage. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forced people to have only one child, some families chose to abort the pregnancy if the baby was a girl. China’s seventh census in 2020 showed that the male to female ratio in China was 105 to 100 and there were 35.9 million more males than females.
As a result, many young men cannot find girlfriends. Of course, there are reasons such as work pressure and so on other than the population parity. A new business started that when a young man goes home for Chinse New Year or other occasion, he hires a woman to go together with him and act as his girlfriend to quiet down his parents’ pressure on him to find a girlfriend.
An article reported that in the year 2022, a woman lending herself out as a “girlfriend” charged 1,000 yuan per day for her services (the price could go to 2,500 yuan per day during holidays) and she made 40,000 yuan (US$ 6,000) from this business.
Source: Guancha, March 17, 2023
https://www.guancha.cn/politics/2023_03_17_684476.shtml