Why China’s Marriage Crisis Matters

China 's fertility rate in 2025 is expected to fall to 0.9 births per woman ( 2.1 is the standard replacement level), just half of what officials predicted in 2016 .

Premier Li Qiang announced that the government will be rolling out new policies to boost the birth rate.

But with marriages having plummeted over the past decade and half , China 's pro-natalist agenda will inevitably fall short.

Traditionally Confucian -influenced regions have the lowest fertility rates in the world, partly because their overemphasis on education translates into an underemphasis on marriage and childbearing.

In China , the legal minimum age for marriage is usually between 16 and 18, but in China , it was raised to 22 for men and 20 for women in 1980 .

People have grown so accustomed to marrying and having children later that lowering the age to 18 would do nothing now to boost the fertility rate.

Tencent has made a $ 1.25bn investment in a spin-off from Ubisoft , the maker of the Assassin's Creed video games.

At least 144 people have died and hundreds are injured in Myanmar following a 7.7 magnitude earthquake.

Japan 's evacuation plan calls for evacuation of 110,00 residents and 10,000 visitors on the Sakishima using ships and planes to evacuate them within 6 days .