The lonely Chinese men being conned by fake brides
BBC News · C · trust 35/100
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At 37, Wang Zhuang had almost given up hope of finding a wife, until he saw the glossy matchmaking adverts.
They promised he wouldn't have to waste years on building a relationship that had no future. They offered to introduce him to a demure, devoted woman.
"The matchmakers said that girls from Guizhou are frugal," Wang says. "They told me they are good at running a household, able to do housework, and their families are very poor, so after marrying into your family, they would settle down and live a life with you."
So Wang travelled to Guiyang, a city in the southwestern province of Guizhou, in the hope of finding his soulmate.
He thought he had, when he was matched with a woman who seemed to tick every box. They had only met a few times before they married.
Then, almost as quickly as his new life had begun, it was over.
"My whole family has been thrown into chaos," he says, shaking his head.
He is still picking up the pieces more than a year after he discovered that everything he had been told by his wife was a lie.
She was a former karaoke hostess who'd been married three times, had three children, a serious sexually transmitted disease and was deeply in debt. She had even lied about her age.
He is fighting for a divorce and cannot return home to his old life - at least until he can recoup some of his life savings, which he says he paid to the agency within hours of being introduced to several potential matches.
"My parents blame me. I have insomnia and anxiety. I can't focus on work."
Wang's story is an extreme symptom of a demographic crisis that has long been in the making in China.
For decades, China's Communist Party decreed that couples could have only one child. They reversed course in January 2016 but by then the "one-child" policy, coupled with a preference for boys, had produced a shrinking pool of women and a stark gender imbalance.
There are now 30 million more men than women in China – that's more than the male population of the UK, or the entire population of Australia.
This has left men like Wang, who are in their late 30s and who live in smaller cities or far- flung, rural areas, with few options. Women in these places can afford to be choosy as they know they are in demand.
"The requirements for men are very high in my city. You need to have a car, a house and your family should preferably run a business," he says.
Many families also demand a high "bride price", a longstanding Chinese custom where the groom's family gives money to the bride. In parts of China, where men far outnumber women, this has become a significant financial burden.
Hence the appeal of matchmaking agencies like the ones in Guizhou, which are proposing a one-stop, quick solution - or "flash marriages".
Matchmaking agencies are hardly new in China, but many seem to be finding vulnerable targets in men who are struggling to find partners as they grow older.
So much so that state media recently reported that the industry had seen "rapid growth" which had "bred illegal practices and chaos".
It's hard to determine the scale of such fraud across China but it has grown enough to draw the attention of Chinese officials. Between January 2024 and March 2025, prosecutors handled cases involving 1,546 individuals for crimes related to the matchmaking industry.
This month, five separate authorities jointly launched a nationwide crackdown on the matchmaking industry after the issue generated "widespread public concern".
In one case, a matchmaking agency reportedly used karaoke waitresses as bait to defraud 128 victims of more than 2.5 million yuan (£274,000, $371,000).
"I think the government could introduce industry-specific regulations targeting flash marriage scams," Fan Binghe, from the Nanjing Office of the Beijing Jingshi law firm, told the BBC.
Although Guiyang has become synonymous with this booming "flash marriage" market, there is little to suggest it is a romantic hub.
The agency offices sit in a dense warren of buildings above a shopping precinct, where vendors sell local fruit and workers queue for takeaway sour soup rice noodles.
Wang, however, was convinced he could trust them after the company told him they would do a full background check and that he would be entitled to compensation if he was the victim of fraud.
So he paid up and the introductions began.
He met seven women in various "blind date" rooms over a few days while being carefully supervised by agency staff. He asked questions about where they came from, if they'd been married before and if they had any kids.
He set his heart on the eighth woman he met. He was hoping to meet someone who hadn't been married before, with no children and who was just a little younger than him.
"She also dressed very simply," he recalls. "She looked introverted and honest."
They met four or five times for just eight to ten minutes each time. He says they had been under strict instructions not to exchange phone numbers or any details on private messages, or they would be fined.
After two or three days he decided she was the one and he agreed to pay her a substantial bride price. "I spent more than 300,000 yuan ($44,000)," he says, with a pile of well-thumbed legal papers in hand to prove it.
"If you include the wedding banquet and everything else, I spent around 400,000 to 500,000 yuan."
The whole process was documented by the matchmaking agency in a series of glossy photos, which they also use to advertise their services on Chinese social media.
In the video the couple are holding hands on a red carpet and smiling while romantic music plays in the background.
Just months into the marriage, debt collectors started calling, alleging she owed them money.
Wang grew suspicious and wanted to know what else she had kept hidden. He checked her phone and found details of her former life, her birth certificate and former marriage…
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