What’s a good man worth in China’s marriage market?

在中国的婚姻市场里,好男人 值多少钱?

Economist

2026-01-23

33 分钟
PDF

单集文稿 ...

  • Okay, let's get into it.

  • I want to start today by taking you to a specific very interesting corner of the internet.

  • We are going to a Chinese social media app called Xiaohongshu.

  • Which translates to Little Red Book.

  • Exactly.

  • And for anyone who hasn't spent hours scrolling through it,

  • it's this massive social media platform.

  • It's like if Instagram and Pinterest had a baby

  • and that baby was completely obsessed with lifestyle trends,

  • luxury goods, and, well, life advice.

  • It's a very, very accurate barometer of the urban middle-class psyche in China, certainly.

  • It's where you see aspirations take shape.

  • For sure.

  • So earlier this month, a user who goes by the name Yun Chichi posted something.

  • And it didn't just get a few likes.

  • It absolutely exploded.

  • It went viral almost instantly, just tearing through the platform's algorithm.

  • And when you look at the post itself, it's not at all hard to see why.

  • On the surface, it was an incredibly compelling proposition.

  • It was basically a listing.