The Chinese Men Swindled by Fake Brides

At 37, Wang Zhuang was still single and almost giving up on finding a wife. Yet a glimmer of hope arose after he saw a glossy advert for a matchmaking agency. The advert promised he would not need to waste years building a relationship with no future. The agency offered to introduce single men like him to gentle and loyal women. ‘The matchmakers said that women from Guizhou are frugal,’ Wang said. ‘The agency told me these women are good at managing a household, capable of doing housework, and their families are very poor. So after marriage, they will settle down and live a life with you.’

Wang then resolved to travel to Guiyang, a city in the southwestern province of Guizhou, hoping to find his soulmate. He thought he had found his match when he was paired with a woman who seemed to meet all his criteria. They met only a few times before getting married. Then, as quickly as his new life began, it all came to an end. ‘My entire family was thrown into chaos,’ he said, shaking his head. To this day, he is still trying to recover his life after learning that everything his wife told him was a lie. The woman was a former karaoke hostess who had been married three times, had three children, suffered from a serious sexually transmitted disease, and was saddled with heavy debts. She even lied about her age.

Wang is now attempting to get a divorce. He cannot return to his old life, at least not until he can recover some of his savings, which he believes were handed over to the agency just hours after being introduced to several prospective partners. ‘My parents blame me. I suffer from insomnia and anxiety. I cannot focus on work.’ Wang’s story is an extreme symptom of a long-standing demographic crisis in China. For decades, the Chinese Communist Party mandated that married couples could only have one child. They changed the policy in January 2016. However, by that time, the ‘one-child’ policy, combined with a preference for sons, had produced a steadily shrinking number of women and a glaring gender imbalance. There are now 30 million more men than women in China. That figure is larger than the entire male population of the UK, or indeed the entire population of Australia.

Women in such places can be more selective because they know they are in high demand. ‘The requirements for men are very high in my city. I must have a car, a house, and my family must own a business,’ he said. Many families also demand a high ‘bride price’, a longstanding tradition in China where the groom’s family gives money to the bride’s family. In some regions of China, where men vastly outnumber women, this has become a huge financial burden. This is why matchmaking agencies like the one in Guizhou become attractive, as they offer a quick, integrated solution, or ‘flash marriage’. Matchmaking agencies are not new in China, but many appear to find a vulnerable target among men who struggle to find a partner as they age. Even state media recently reported that the industry is experiencing ‘rapid growth’ that is ‘breeding illegal practices and chaos’.

It is difficult to determine the scale of such fraud networks across China, but the cases have grown large enough to attract the attention of Chinese officials. Between January 2024 and March 2025, prosecutors in China handled cases involving 1,546 individuals linked to crimes in the matchmaking industry. This month, five different authorities jointly launched a national crackdown on the matchmaking industry after the issue sparked ‘public concern’. In one case, an agency was reported to have used karaoke hostesses as bait to swindle 128 victims out of a total of more than 2.5 million yuan. ‘I think the government can create specific industry rules targeting flash marriage fraud,’ Fan Binghe from the Beijing Jingshi law firm told the BBC.

The agency offices were inside a maze of dense buildings above a shopping area, where traders sold local fruit and workers queued to buy noodle soup to take away. Yet Wang believed he could trust them after the company said it would conduct thorough background checks and that he was entitled to compensation if he became a victim of fraud. So he paid, and the introduction process began. Wang met seven women in various ‘blind date’ rooms over several days, under the strict supervision of agency staff. He asked questions about their origins, whether they had been married before, and whether they had children. He then settled on the eighth woman he met. Wang had hoped to meet someone who had never been married, had no children, and was only slightly younger than him. ‘She also dressed very simply,’ he recalled. ‘She appeared reserved and honest.’ They met four or five times, each for only eight to ten minutes. According to him, they were strictly instructed not to exchange phone numbers or any personal messaging details. Non-compliance would result in a fine. After two or three days, Wang decided this woman was the right one and agreed to pay a large bride price.