Supply My Demand

I've lived in Hong Kong since 2012, and as Mainland-HK tensions increased over the years, so has the list of resources I've heard local residents accuse Chinese tourists/residents of "stealing". Everyone knows that high demand and limited supply increases price, and with parallel trading and anchor babies (babies born in HK to Mainland mothers have right of abode in HK), angry HK residents have pointed to supply shortages/price increases in housing, education, jobs, household products, milk powder, etc., etc....

But in my four years here, I've rarely heard complaints of Mainland Chinese "stealing" another vital resource: Hong Kong's single men and women.

Was it a lack of demand on both sides? Or was I just completely misinformed as a clueless expat?
Curious, I discovered that the HK's Census and Statistics Department actually provides annual data on registered marriages between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese residents, and some findings are presented in this post. Unfortunately only male-female marriages are studied here, so I'm not sure what other relationships trends would look like.
I. HK Marriages between HK and Mainland Chinese couples

The graph below shows marriages registered in HK between HK males and Mainland Chinese females. From 2010 to 2015, these marriages have been on a declining trend. Uh oh. Are HK straight men 1) losing interest in Mainland females, 2) increasingly undesired by Mainland Chinese females, or 3) losing interest in females/marriage in general?


To see whether HK-ers were just increasingly jaded about marriage, I compared these trends to the overall HK marriage growth rate. From the graph below, it seems that marriage growth rates have been generally decreasing, but from 2014-2015, HK-Mainland marriages still declined more than the overall rates of change. Interestingly, this was also around the time when anti-China sentiments were the highest in recent years (Umbrella Revolution).



The graph below shows a similar result--in terms of percentage share of total HK marriages, HK-Mainland marriages accounted for >45% of total marriages in 2005, but by 2015, only represented ~35% of all marriages. In particular, HK Male-Mainland Female pairings have decreased from 39% to only 25% of total marriages by 2015.

However, there exists a glimmer of hope in cross-border relations: HK Female-Mainland Male marriages have still increased proportionally over the last decade!



At a time of high tensions and uncertainty over Hong Kong's future, could Hong Kong females actually be the region's most promising and effective diplomat?

II. Hong Kong residents moving to Mainland China for marriage

There was another factor to be considered. What about cross-border marriages that were happening not in HK, but in China? The HK Census Dept. doesn't record such data, but it does provide information on how many Certificates of Absence of Marriage Records (CAMR) are issued to HK citizens each year for the purpose of marrying in Mainland China, which we can use as a proxy for the number of HK citizens intending to marry in the Mainland. CAMRs basically prove to others that you are indeed a (legal) bachelor/bachelorette with no (legal) babydaddies/babymommas running around Hong Kong.

The graph below shows that the number of HK males intending to move across the border to marry Mainland females has dropped significantly since 2005. Regardless of whether fewer Mainland Chinese females were visiting Hong Kong, it seems that HK men weren't making the extra effort either to go through customs/uproot themselves to marry Mainland brides.


III. What does this all mean??

The above data seems to indicate the following trends:

• HK Male-Mainland Female marriages, while traditionally forming the bulk of cross-border marriages, are on a steady decline;
• HK Female-Mainland Male marriages have become increasingly popular in recent years, whether in HK or in China, although growth rates are normalizing.