China Changing Marriage Law to Increase Birth Rates
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Summary
In order to deal with China's demographic catastrophe, the government is trying to make it easier for couples to get married and get divorced. But is this a good or bad thing? Simone and I discuss the pros and cons of China's new marriage and divorce laws.
Transcript
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Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to be going into how China is attempting to deal with its
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demographic catastrophe it's going through. And one of the ways is through changing how marriage
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and divorce work in the country. And we had seen a tweet that briefly covered some of the changes
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that they had in this area. But I wanted to go a lot deeper than this particular tweet into the
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specifics of how things are changing, and how people in China are reacting to it, and why they
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think it might work. You ready to dive in or anything? Yes. Go further. I'm intrigued. This
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would happen. We're like, look, people are going to what's interesting about these changes. I think
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many red pillars would probably like a lot of them. So we'll see how this goes. You know,
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they're not all the worst. Okay. Marriage registration. The revised law proposed in August
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2024 and effective as of February 2025 removes regional restrictions on marriage registration,
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allowing couples to register anywhere in China without needing to return to their household
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registration, Hakuku, locations. This simplifies the process, aiming to encourage marriage amid
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demographic crises. It sounds like marriage before then must have been uniquely difficult.
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What on earth is this? Like needing to return to... This is actually a really interesting point. So
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in China, you are like sort of owned by your starting district often. And to move to a new
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area, it can be quite difficult and require permission from the central government.
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Almost like changing citizenship. Yeah. Almost like changing citizenship. And if you're like a migrant
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worker or something like that, you often need to go back to your home area for certain like legal
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things. What's really fascinating about this is where this relates to religious history. A lot of
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people like modern historians and stuff like this have said that they do not believe that Joseph had to
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return to his hometown during the census because they're like, that doesn't make sense. How could a
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Roman census work where literally everyone who had ever moved at some point in their life had to return
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to their hometown at the same time for a census? And I think what they're not taking into consideration
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is one, we see this in other countries like China, even today, basically. And two, not as many people
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moved in those types of environments where your legal standing was in large part tied to where you
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were born, probably in the Roman Empire or something like that. If you moved too far from where you were
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born, somebody could just take you and say you're their slave, right? Like there wasn't a lot you could
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legally do. So it was quite dangerous to move long distances during those time periods and try to live
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somewhere else unless your job was trading. And if you were a trader, you'd have guards and stuff like
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that. And it was quite a different thing than just like moving. But anyway, I find that to be a good
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thing. They are loosening bureaucratic bloat. 100%. Yeah. China's marriage rate has plummeted with only 6.1
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million marriages recorded in 2024. A 20.5% drop from 2023. Year over year, it dropped by over 20%.
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And this was the lowest since 1986. This decline coupled with low birth rates has prompted the
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government to promote family-friendly policies, quote-unquote family-friendly, which is wild.
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Divorce proceedings. The 30-day cooling-off period first introduced in 2021 under China's civil code
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is retained and emphasized in the 2025 revisions. Couples filing for divorce by mutual consent must wait 30
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days during which either party can withdraw the application, effectively halting the process.
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Wow. If no withdrawal occurs, they must reapply within another 30 days to finalize the divorce.
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Otherwise, the application is automatically withdrawn and canceled.
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Oh, so just adding friction to the process. They're reducing friction to get married,
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Exactly. And obviously, a lot of people are freaking out about the, what? What if he's abusive?
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Well, we'll get to that because it's not that they haven't thought of that. But anyway.
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This period has significantly reduced divorce rates, a reported 70% drop in the first quarter of 2021,
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from 1 million to 296,000. However, it has sparked criticism for delaying or preventing divorces,
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particularly in cases of domestic violence, despite exemptions for such cases. The point
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being is that there are actually exemptions for those cases. Not a bad law to implement here in
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the U.S. People would go absolutely panic mode if they did, but- Yeah, they would.
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Anyway. Critics argue the cooling-off period undermines personal autonomy, with one Weibo user
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stating, it's easy to get married, but hard to divorce. What a stupid rule. A sentiment that
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garnered tens of thousands of likes. Why would that be a stupid rule? Why would a government
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who prefers people being married not want it to be easy to get married and hard to divorce?
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That's why, if you look at the executive orders we submitted for the Trump administration, we wanted
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to reduce any tax penalties for marriage. A government should always prefer people to be
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married. Married people are just strictly better than non-married people. They commit less crimes.
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They make more money. They are more stable, economically speaking. They make for better parents.
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They, like, in every metric, you as a government would prefer to have more of your population
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married. Any thoughts before I go further? I agree. Well, I would also add that kids are a lot
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better off when they have two parents to support them. So, yeah. I mean, it's tough. Obviously,
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it's complicated. And then when there is abuse involved or if a parent is incredibly toxic
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and putting the kids in danger, it's a very different situation. But yeah, I think being too flippant
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about both getting married and getting divorced is not a good thing. Yeah. Ownership based on
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payment. The 2025 law reportedly shifts property division to favor the spouse who paid for the
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asset, even if both names are on the title. This marks a departure from the previous norm of equal
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division of marital property. For example, a husband purchased a property and later added his wife's
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name to the deed would retain full ownership upon divorce. That's going to piss off women a lot,
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but it is a very sane as a, like, I don't understand why that wouldn't be the norm everywhere.
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Yeah. Well, I mean, it really, really, really disincentivizes people from getting divorced when
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they feel like doing so will protect or enable them to just live financially independently. There
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will be less financial misaligned incentives. Yeah. Yeah. No. And I think that for a lot of women,
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they're like, well, you know, I gave up my years as a career or whatever. So I deserve a portion of it.
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Yeah. But the existing system just makes no sense. It doesn't make sense that you should be getting
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alimony and child payment and half his stuff. They say the woman gets half, the man gets a quarter
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and the lawyers get a quarter. That doesn't make sense because that almost incentivizes women who
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are the less interested party in the relationship to initiate a divorce because it can be quite a
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cushy life. It's in their financial best interest, especially if they feel like they can trade up.
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So not only do you end up with more assets than you had coming into the marriage, but you can also
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do it all over again, which is really bad. Yeah. Just keep, keep playing that game and live like
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that. And that is. No, I would also say like those who are arguing, this is pushing in people into
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trad relationships. I would actually argue that there's a world in which this encourages more of
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what we consider to be trad relationships, which is the corporate family. This is saying women,
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if you want to be financially safe, if you want to have an off-ramp from a toxic marriage,
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you need to maintain some level of income, some kind of career, whether it's from home
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or remotely or in an office, because if you don't and you want to leave someday, you will have no
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savings. You will have no house. You will not have anything. And I think it's really good
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to have incentives in place that also encourage both partners to be economically productive,
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possibly even together, maybe from the home, whatever it is. And this does that,
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which is really great. I think anything that it encourages women or any, like any single partner
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to just sit there and be 100% a homemaker that is not bringing in money is very dangerous because
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as we've, you've discussed at length in the Pregnative Schedule Relationships, this may work
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for 10, 15, even 20 years. And then it can become extremely unsustainable and toxic in a relationship.
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What's interesting is that if we contrast this with what's been happening in the United States in
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terms of divorce law, it aligns with it to an extent. In 2011, a Supreme Court ruling that family
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homes purchased before the marriage belonged to the register buyer, often the husband, which
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disadvantaged women due to cultural norms where men typically provide homes.
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That was almost certainly a different tick than the first one.
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Okay. Well, the really important thing that you need to make sure you do going forward is not walk
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through that deer field. We need to walk around where the grass is mowed. I know you like taking the
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shortcut, but that is almost 100% where you got that tick. So you are absolutely right, Simone.
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So let's carry on. You're talking about how this was similar to a shift in US divorce law that also
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allowed men to keep the house. Yeah. Which just seems sane. Like, especially if women are waiting
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on a man to be that financially stable before marrying him, I can understand being like, okay,
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you know, you work together, you got married at a young age. You didn't know how much money he'd make
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at that time. You know, that's different than you married a guy who was already rich. You absolutely
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should have no claim to that house. Yes. Well, I mean, I, there's something to this concept of
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commingled assets whereby if there's some basis, I think at least in many states for there being
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collaboration on behalf of the couple on certain assets, like investments, then they get split. And if
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they were things that were just maintained separate the whole time, like some investment account that
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only you kept and I never was involved with, then it's much easier for you to argue in a divorce case
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that you get to keep that. And I think that if a couple grows up together and one decides to work
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and the other decides to stay home with kids that, you know, the house that they buy with the income
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from the one parent made possible by the other parents staying home, that's more arguably something
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that should be split, right? Like, I also don't think that in cases where couples are making difficult
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trade-offs. There should be no consideration of things like that, but absolutely. Like if someone
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bought this with their own money ahead of time, there's no, there's no right. The other partner
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has to it. I think this more is, is, is a nuanced situation that comes up when there's a trade-off
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between, you know, career choices and especially child rearing choices. Yeah. So next ex post claim,
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this rule makes it impossible for some women to take financial advantage of marriage, reflecting a perception
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that it closes legal loopholes. Properties gifted to the husband by his parents are explicitly
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excluded from shared matrimonial property and remain his sole property post-divorce. This
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provision reinforces the traditional practice where families often agree invest in homes for the
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couple, but it can leave women with little to claim to assets they may have contributed to
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indirectly through household labor. This rule has fueled debates about fairness as women in China
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often face economic disadvantages, including a gender income gap and limited property ownership.
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Well, first I don't know if they have a gender income gap there. I know that people lie about
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that in the United States. So like, that makes me suspicious of it everywhere. There's no people
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know there isn't a gender income gap in the U S when you control for like hours put in and everything
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like that. And there is, however, I should say an explicit gender income gap for younger Americans,
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but women make more than men. So like, yes, there is economic disparity and it's that we need to start
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prejudicing against women. Well, and if anything, the disadvantage that women have income wise is
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due to cultural disparities, like women feeling like they need to be the one to scale down or
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start working part-time because they want to be the one to take their kid to the doctor. They want
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to be the one to do this or that. And in our relationship, for example, Malcolm does all that.
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And so it doesn't have to be that way, but I think a lot of women just either want to do that. They want
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to spend more of their time parenting. So they choose to work less. And then therefore they end up making
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less like there are long-term career impacts, of course, to having gaps in your resume.
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And so I would say the measurable aspects, when you say controlling for other things,
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a lot of it's controlling for these culturally driven decisions that women make with regard to
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their careers that affects lifetime income. Yes, absolutely. And I'd also note here that
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people can be like, well, that seems totally reasonable that, you know, because the money was
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given to the man by his parents, right? The problem becomes it's, it's not as bad in China
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because you have so many single, you know, parent households, right? Like they're, they're parents
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to one kid. But if you have a son and a daughter, you pay for your son's house, but not your daughter's
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house because the, the parents of the man who she married pay for that. Yeah. Which is why this
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systemically disadvantages women. Yeah. And it can be fixed by creating situations where you pay for
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your children, regardless of their genders. But then people will say, well, then I won't secure as good
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of a woman or I won't secure any woman as well, because there's, you know, far fewer women than men in China
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due to the one child system and them like exposing, you know, female babies and stuff like that,
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which, you know, just puts them in a terrible situation. A lot of people in China just aren't
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going to get a partner. And I don't know what to say about that. Not good.
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Impact and controversy. Gender inequality concerns. Feminist critics, such as writer Zhao Meilin,
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argue that law restricts women's rights to seek separation, particularly as women initiate 74%
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of divorce cases. The cooling off period is seen as a step backwards, potentially trapping women in
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unhappy marriages. You know, it's like, okay, if they're initiating 74% of divorces, that makes it
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sound like women are the problem. Not, not the men. That's not a thing to brag about. Property division
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changes exacerbate these concerns as women who contribute non-financially, e.g. childcare and
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housework may receive little or no compensation. A 2024 study by Yale sociologist Emma Zang,
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the 2011 property rule reduced women's wellbeing by limiting their economic autonomy, though some
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couples adapted by adding wives' names to deeds. Okay. In cases of domestic violence, the cooling
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off period's exemption is inconsistently applied, with reports of courts denying divorces despite
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evidence of abuse. For example, a 2019 case involving a woman assaulted by her husband
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required public pressure via social media to secure a divorce. Now, no, when you get something like
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this, this is a direct result of people who didn't take pronatalism seriously. This is what you get.
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This is the natural result of not taking pronatalism seriously. Yeah. Not ideal. Yeah. Women's rights
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do get eroded as panic sets in. It didn't have to be this way. Yeah. Social media backlash. The law has
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generated significant online criticism, with Weibo hashtags about the draft law garnering over 500
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million views in August 2024. Users have called it unfair, with one stating, when they want you to do
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something, they'll simplify the process, but when they don't, there will be endless procedures. Well,
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I mean, yeah, that is what was going to happen as a result of you guys not getting married and having
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kids. Yeah. Duh. On X, posts reflect polarized views. Some praise the law for protecting men's assets and
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closing loopholes, while others highlight negative impact on women, particularly in abusive situations.
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These posts often lack primary sources and should be treated as inconclusive. Women have also used
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platforms like Zhang Zhe to celebrate divorces, with divorce parties gaining popularity, signaling a
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cultural shift towards viewing divorce as empowerment rather than stigma. Well, that's not good when
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that's happening. By the way, I noticed here when I was reading like on X, you know, the whole like
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X Twitter thing, like the naming of it, I feel like X is actually gaining traction and becoming a bit
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normalized now. Yeah. I think we're getting used to it. Finally. It sounds cooler than Twitter and more
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masculine. It's like, it's like when they rebrand, like, like diet Coke to Coke Zero.
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Yeah. Okay. Was drinking it. That's what I feel like it was from Twitter to X. It's a version of
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Twitter that's like manly. Even the logo looks like one of those manified like shaver logos or
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something or like, yeah, you know, just so you know that like, if you're uncomfortable using this
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product as a man, like this is an extra manly product. It's okay now. It's okay.
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Oh my gosh. Anyway, by the way, I don't know if you've heard, but all of these people have been so
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proud of their blue checkmark in San Francisco. It became like a common thing to buy these like
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blue checkmark, like sings like, like tokens for like the site of your house. You know how you would
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have like a fire ornament in like Philadelphia or something. Oh my gosh. Show like I'm a blue
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checkmark house. No. And then when Elon bought the platform, they, they all started like freaking
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out and taking them down and having me, because you know, it costs to get the company to, there's
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people you could pay. I think it was a hundred thousand, right? To get a blue checkmark for
00:17:24.140
yourself. No, I think you just need to know who to contact and have 10 to a hundred thousand. Yeah.
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But if you don't know who to contact, there were agents who specialize in getting these.
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I didn't know anything about that. That's crazy. Yeah. Mutual agreement. Couples can divorce through
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civil bureau. If they mutually agree on the terms, including property division and child custody,
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this process requires a written agreement and is subject to a 30 day cooling off period.
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litigation. If mutual agreement fails, divorce proceeds through litigation where courts evaluate
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grounds like adultery, domestic violence, abandonment, or breakdown in mutual affection.
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Courts often favor mediation to preserve marriages and first time diverse petitioners are frequently
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denied to maintain quote unquote, social stability. Grounds for divorce. Adultery can influence property
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division and custody, but is not criminalized. Domestic violence, while a valid ground often requires
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substantial evidence and cultural biases in courts, hinder women's cases.
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Not about domestic violence. That that's, that's scary to not be able to get out of a marriage. That's
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that's like, that is, is, that's not ideal. But again, China is going to pay like,
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this is only just the beginning of what China is going to start doing as they get desperate.
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Yeah. So I decided to, to, to go into what else China is doing to increase its fertility rate. There
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you have financial incentives. Childcare subsidies are a key measure indicated to intended to reduce
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the financial burden of families. Reports from March, 2025 highlight these subsidies as part of
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a broader strategy discussed at China's political meetings, aiming to hit economic gross target at 5%.
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Free preschool education is another initiative. And then you've got healthcare support, expanded state
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health care support for childbirths and improved pediatric services designed to lower medical
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expenses. Social measures, encouraging marriage is seen as a precursor to higher birth rates. Notably,
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Shangdang Suning chemical group issued a memo in 2025, requiring unmarried workers aged 28 to 58,
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including divorced individuals to marry by September 30 as their face termination, framing non-marriage as
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Oh, what? That's insane! Can you imagine the freak out in the United States if suddenly you were going
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to lose your job for not getting married? And I wonder what sorts of marriages of convenience,
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complete sham marriages this is going to produce. Like, this is the kind of policy that just is going to
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backfire. It's not going to get people to marry for the right reasons. And this is something we talk
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about with prenatalist policy a lot. It has to be endogenous. It can't be exogenous. You can't
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force it upon people. It has to come from within. And if you don't fix your culture,
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if you don't fix hope for the future, you're not going to do that.
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Yeah. The group reversed this, by the way. They didn't, they, they, they, I imagine as such,
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I imagine it was somebody who like had some, like, you know, he's running the company,
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but he also had some sort of a CCP position. He's like, I know what I'll do to help them with their
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fertility rate. I'll force everyone in my company to get married. But I can see this becoming more
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normalized around the world in the future. Like, this is like the first instance in which
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are like, Oh my God, can you believe? But I would not be surprised if we actually see quite
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a lot of that in the future. Yeah, absolutely. Some districts are also considering a three
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child policy, a shift from a former one child policy to encourage larger families, which they've
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been doing for a while. What Simone was so silly about our baby. She's being mischievous on purpose,
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but in a really sweet way that of course means she's super related to us.
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I was not mischievous. I was a very, very well-became child.
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Okay. So I think that these sorts of changes are things that we're going to expect sort of
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everywhere in countries where I think one thing that we definitely won't expect is things to get
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better for women. Give women more autonomy, make it easier for women to divorce, make it easier. Like,
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you are not going to see that going forward. And people can be like, Oh, women's right to being rolled
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back. And it's like, well, it's basically like we gave you a, like, when I give one of my kids,
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like a privilege or a toy and I'm like, yeah, but don't do something bad with this.
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And they immediately go and do something bad with it. That's what women basically did.
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This is why you can't have nice things, that kind of thing.
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I mean, so I like some things about this. I like that China is looking at regulatory
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barriers and regulatory bloat and playing with those, with those levers, making it, for example,
00:22:05.820
easier to get married. And I think that in the United States, before things get bad for women,
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there are so many nice for everyone things that can be made so much easier that are, for example,
00:22:16.060
related to the executive orders we submitted to the Trump White House. For example, most middle-class
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couples in the United States are penalized on their taxes for getting married. They pay more
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in taxes for getting married, which of course didn't incentivize people from getting married.
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So if we were to remove that tax penalty, we could increase probably our rates of marriage
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in the United States. Same with things like daycare regulation and car seat regulation,
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free range child laws. So I think there's so much that can be done. And I like that China is
00:22:46.620
looking at regulation. And I think this is why many people have lauded, like many intellectuals online
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are lauding what China is doing. So like, oh, look, like they're trying to play with levers of
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policy to really address demographic lapse, which is a super big deal. But I don't think they're doing,
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they're not doing it in a way where I feel like it's going to make enough of a difference.
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And they're also not making life materially better for people who choose to create families in a way that
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gets them excited or makes them like, I don't see how this is going to make it easier for couples who
00:23:17.740
want to have more kids to do so. And making it scarier to get married, which is, you know, just
00:23:25.100
just making it easier to get married. I don't think it's now going to address the chilling effect that
00:23:29.660
has been placed on marriage by what will be like a lot of social media campaigns of like, I can't get
00:23:35.020
out of this abusive relationship because of China's evil misogynistic laws. And then women are like,
00:23:40.060
well, I'm just never going to get married because that's obviously a scam. Now that's
00:23:43.740
obviously to trap me. And once I'm in, I can't get out and the government's out to get me for this.
00:23:47.900
So I think this is going to backfire. And as much as I love the general concept and you know,
00:23:53.180
the spirit it's, it's so sweet, but it's wrong. And this is really going to hurt them in the end.
00:23:58.540
Well, it's funny that you say that because they're already working on solutions.
00:24:02.860
One is the national committee of Chinese people's political
00:24:10.700
rolls off the tongue, lowering the legal age of marriage from 22 for men and 20 for women to 18,
00:24:18.300
aiming to quote unquote, unleash reproductive potential.
00:24:21.420
I got China really did not like families and children. I mean, you can get married in the US
00:24:26.780
when you're 18. You don't have to go to your local province to get married in the United States. So
00:24:31.740
it's really insane to me. I think in a lot of, not a lot of, in a few of the Southern states,
00:24:36.540
age of consent is as low as 14. If you have been married by that age, which you need your parents'
00:24:42.220
permission to marry. Right. But you need your parents' permission to marry. Right.
00:24:45.580
Yeah. Of course they've got safeguards in place.
00:24:55.820
But yeah, one of my favorite things is they've been changing a lot of the statues.
00:24:58.940
It used to have like one child and now they're putting in like...
00:25:01.100
Yeah, suddenly a child has appeared. Child number three, child number two.
00:25:09.580
But that's what we need to do is start making pro-natalist propaganda art with AI and spamming
00:25:16.220
the world with it. They just put it all over our house.
00:25:19.180
Someone on X has been trying to do that. They created an image of the Mona Lisa with a baby.
00:25:24.780
Isn't there speculation that the Mona Lisa either is pregnant or recently postpartum?
00:25:31.660
What makes you... What was the speculation from?
00:25:34.940
Art historians? Am I crazy? Hold on. Mona Lisa...
00:25:48.780
The theory that Mona Lisa was pregnant is a popular but unproven speculation. In 2006,
00:25:55.660
researchers used high-resolution imaging techniques to study the painting. They found evidence of a
00:26:00.060
subtle veil around the subject's neck, which is similar to veils worn by pregnant women in the
00:26:04.460
Renaissance period. Additionally, the subject's face appears slightly fuller and her hair is
00:26:08.620
slightly disheveled, which could be signs of pregnancy. Okay, that's pushing it. I get you.
00:26:20.540
Anyway. Well, what are we doing for dinner tonight?
00:26:23.100
I was going to do more of your pineapple mango curry. A little bit more. You can have that with
00:26:35.580
Whatever is easy. Or plantains, which I can try to spice this time.
00:26:40.940
You asked for it. I know, and we tried it, and it wasn't good. It wasn't that you did a bad job
00:26:46.780
cooking them. I just forgot how tasteless they are. I thought they tasted a little bit of banana. I was
00:26:51.900
like, oh, that would be interesting. Instead, it's probably better to do something like banana rice.
00:27:01.180
Or caramelize it. If you take a blowtorch to sugar on top of a banana, you get sort of this
00:27:07.180
banana creme brulee. You get that caramelized sugar.
00:27:09.500
You know what I think would taste pretty interesting is if you blended a banana and
00:27:13.580
mixed it with rice before cooking the rice to create banana rice.
00:27:35.500
You are amazing. And the interview we did before this was ABC went pretty well.
00:27:44.940
By the way, I had a tick crawling on me during the interview that I had to flick off and not
00:27:55.020
Crawling on my hand. It probably crawled on from the jacket that I put back on
00:28:15.740
In lands where the birth rates fade from sight.
00:28:43.100
But when babies don't come, the future's a ghost.
00:28:48.380
We told them, my friends, they'll regret it the most.
00:28:59.020
The warnings we gave, they were brash and bold.
00:29:09.180
Your culture's a grave, just a shot in the dark.
00:29:59.900
The warnings we gave, they were brash and bold.
00:30:09.980
Your culture's a grave, just a shot in the dark.
00:30:15.100
Now the old folks sigh, no heirs to their name.
00:30:30.220
We screamed it for years, give women their rights.
00:30:59.660
But cultures that bind, they'll fade and they'll fall.
00:31:15.020
We warned them, oh shit, now the end's drawing near.
00:31:25.900
The warnings we gave, they were brash and bold.
00:31:35.980
Your culture's a grave, just a shot in the dark.
00:31:46.380
Who begged for choice for the dream up and died.
00:31:55.980
Now your empire's dust, just a ghost in the crown.