China

Chinese authorities break up arranged child marriage after teenage daughter calls police to report her own wedding


A 14-year-old girl in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region was forced by her family to marry a stranger after her parents received a 250,000 yuan (S$54,000) betrothal gift from the groom’s family.

The teenager, surnamed Yang, called the police on the wedding day and authorities stepped in to cancel the illegal betrothal, according to a statement from the justice department in the city of Zhongwei.

In China, it is illegal for men younger than 22 to get married. For women, the age is 20. Yang would be entering grade eight of her nine-year compulsory education in China. The age of the groom, surnamed Li, was not made public.

Yang had never met the man, and the marriage had been organised without the girl’s consent, the government statement said.

The 250,000-yuan dowry would have been over eight times more than the average annual income for urban residents in the county.

After the wedding was broken up, members of both families were taken to the police station, where they reportedly quarrelled about how to handle the bride payment.

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After six rounds of negotiations mediated by the officials, the Yang family was ordered to return home with their daughter and reimburse all of the dowry money to the Li family.

The article described the locals of Zhongwei as being “poorly educated and lacking legal awareness. It is a common phenomenon for people who have not reached the legal marriage age, or minor girls who are still in the compulsory education period, to be forced into marriage.”

A staff member of the county’s justice bureau told the Beijing Youth Daily that Yang wanted to go to a vocational school or move to China’s big cities in the future. The report said her parents had promised to respect her choice.

Child marriages are still a thriving phenomenon in China.

In the city of Maoming, in Guangdong province in south China, a 17-year-old girl was saved from a forced marriage in June 2020 after she told the local authorities that her parents had made her marry a man she had met only six times.

A few months later, in Shantou, also in Guangdong, a 13-year-old girl was sent back to school after getting married to a 17-year-old boy in a formal ceremony based on local customs. According to both families, the teenage couple had been in a romantic relationship, and the parents believed becoming grandparents as early as possible would bring blessings.

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.



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