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, after the Chinese Government put 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. He said youth organizations including the CYL will work to solve the issue.

The plan calls for more dating activities to be organized for young people, with priority given to older single people. It also plans 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 average marriage age for Chinese people was 26, while in developed areas, people tended to marry at an older age.

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.