A Chinese company was pulled up by officials after backlash to a notice that required unmarried employees to be married by the end of September or face potential termination.
The Shuntian Chemical Group, located in east China’s Shandong province, issued a notice last week that stated that the company believed in the values of “diligence, kindness, loyalty, filial piety, and righteousness”, according to The Global Times. Further, it said that employees should live by these values in their own lives, and that marriage and children were the road to doing so.
“Not responding to the government’s call to improve the marriage rate is disloyal. Not listening to your parents is not filial. Letting yourself be single is not benevolent. Failing your colleagues’ expectations is unjust,” the notice read, according to a translation by the South China Morning Post.
To do so, the notice instructed all single and divorced employees aged 28-58 to “get married and settle down” by 30 September 2025.
Those who were unable to do so by the end of March would be required to write a self-criticism letter.
By the end of June, the company would conduct an evaluation of the still-unmarried employees, and those still single at the end of September would be fired.
Local media reported that the press were told it was an internal decision taken by senior management. However, a company spokesperson clarified later that the policy was intended to urge older unmarried employees to get married, according to The Global Times.
The local human resources and social security bureau reportedly met with company officials on 13 February, pointing out that its notice was a violation of certain provisions of the country’s labour laws.
The company withdrew its notice the following day.
China’s birthrate has been steadily declining since the late 1980s after it introduced a strict one child policy to control the rapidly growing population. Total population fell for the third consecutive year in 2024.
It was still the world’s most populous country until India took the lead in April 2023.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said China’s population declined by 1.39 million in 2024, reaching 1.408 billion, as deaths continued to surpass births.
The country officially ended its “one-child policy” in 2016, but it resulted in a skewed population due to a cultural preference for male children.
Despite government initiatives to encourage young couples to marry and have children, the number of registered marriages plummeted to just over 6.1 million in 2025, a significant drop from 7.68 million in 2021.
The high cost of childcare, education, job uncertainty, and a slowing economy have discouraged many young Chinese from marrying and starting families, demographers believe. They also point to gender discrimination and traditional expectations for women to manage the household as contributing factors to the declining birthrate.
The Independent has reached out to Shuntian Chemical Group for comment.