China’s Civil Affairs University announced a new undergraduate marriage program to develop marriage-related industries and culture, drawing the scorn of social media users, who questioned the need for such a course as marriage rates decline.
With the program due to start next month, the Beijing-based institution aims to “cultivate professionals to develop marriage related industries and culture,” state media reported last week.
Policymakers are struggling to reverse the decline in new births, which is closely linked to marriage rates, after China’s population last year fell for a second consecutive year.
Photo: reuters
Marriage is seen as a prerequisite for having children due to widespread policies, including one that requires parents to present a marriage certificate to register the baby and receive benefits. Single women and LGBTQ couples are not entitled to the same rights.
Called Marriage Services and Management, the new degree program is to focus on the development of the marriage industry, “aiming to highlight China’s positive marriage and family culture to students and the public and advancing reform of China’s marriage customs,” the Global Times reported.
The university would enroll 70 undergraduates from 12 provinces this year to field sectors including “family counseling, high-end wedding planning and the development of matchmaking products,” it reported.
Some Sina Weibo users ridiculed the announcement, with one writing: “It’s time to start a state-owned marriage agency.”
Others questioned the need for such a degree.
“This industry is not just a sunset, it’s doomsday,” one wrote.
“Learning this major is really unemployment after graduation,” another said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS