From Matchmaking Bloggers to the Robot Tax: The Tug-of-War Between Romance, Childbearing, and Capital

Hey everyone, I’ve been checking out The Diplomat website lately, and I can’t believe they’ve been secretly watching our intranet’s live-streamed matchmaking events. From pulling all-nighters to stay online, to heated arguments over live chats, to binge-watching *Wukong*—they know every detail like the back of their hand. You claim to understand diplomacy, but let me ask you: is this what a proper diplomat does? Come to think of it, I’m not exactly a “proper” director either—I enjoy watching it too. But when I heard comments like “a ‘6-point’ cutie can’t even get a trial pass from A9,” I started pondering the meaning behind this rhetoric. It’s not that these talking points feel like a business—it’s that our entire society’s desire to date and have children relies on the industry to step up. We can’t just rely on the government to make a little push; the industry needs to lend a hand, too. Over the past couple of years, the influencer scene has spawned a wave of “Matchmaker” bloggers—essentially, cold, ruthless machines. You enter your personal information, and they use algorithms to calculate your “marital returns.” To lower your expectations for a partner, they offer harsh critiques: “Ordinary women shouldn’t fantasize about using marriage to climb the social ladder. A9 men can afford pets, but they won’t scavenge for scrap—you can reach for the stars, but don’t expect to fly.” For male viewers, solid financial assets are a prerequisite, and a government job carries added value; those who are short, unattractive, poor, or bald can only settle for someone below their level. These humiliating comments make me feel quite uncomfortable. These bloggers are frequently reported, yet their core audience isn’t bothered by it. That’s because it gives them an opportunity to quantify their own “bargaining chips,” recognize what resources they can offer, and determine what they can get in return. The so-called “resources” women possess often have nothing to do with knowledge or skills; they mainly revolve around appearance, fertility window, and job stability. What they’re assessing is whether you’re suitable for raising children in a high-net-worth household. A few years ago, there was a so-called “relationship coach” named Ayawawa, who mainly taught women how to charm men—both by exuding sexual appeal and by alleviating men’s insecurities. She taught women to suppress their true selves, curry favor with their partners, and secure a long-term financial provider. Back then, the mainstream approach was teaching women how to “marry up”; now, the logic has shifted to helping them find their rightful place. I believe this shift reflects a slowdown in social mobility. To protect their wealth, high-net-worth individuals have become more cautious in their choice of partners, so the room for exploiting blind spots through tactics has shrunk. With information overload making it hard to distinguish fact from fiction, risk management requirements for marriage negotiations have increased, and the success rate has dropped. Social media algorithms act like bubbles, creating the illusion that one is highly sought after and leading to a miscalculation of one’s social capital. A new wave of bloggers has moved away from “success philosophy” and instead focuses more on due diligence and compliance, treating people as commodities in a transparent marketplace to facilitate transactions. This effectively strips away the romantic veneer of dating and marriage, laying bare its utilitarian nature. When you dig deep, the truth is far from beautiful. I used to listen to some podcasts on gender issues, and one perspective they explored was evolutionary psychology. David Buss’s *The Evolution of Desire* explains that men’s and women’s mate-selection strategies are biological instincts formed through a long evolutionary process. Men produce more sperm and have lower reproductive costs, so they tend to cast a wide net and place particular emphasis on physical appearance; women, on the other hand, have fewer eggs, higher reproductive costs, and a shorter fertile window; they need to find a partner who can provide resources and a good environment, so they must screen for socioeconomic status. This structure is very stable. Setting aside the predicament of men at the bottom of the wealth ladder who struggle to find wives, there is another huge problem with this traditional model: increasing wealth is far more difficult than improving one’s appearance. During periods of high economic growth, wealth may accumulate rapidly, but once growth slows, high-net-worth men become scarce. Improvements in nutrition, universal access to education, and advances in cosmetic medicine have created greater opportunities for physical transformation. So, if physical appearance were considered a currency, it has been subject to constant inflation. This asymmetry in scarcity gives men at the top absolute leverage. If desired, one could send “Xiao Mei” a trial membership, which would put pressure on the entire market and drive men at the bottom of the economic ladder into incel status—involuntary celibacy. These young men, disillusioned in the dating scene, have already proven to be excellent fuel for Western right-wing politics. The “male awakening” often attributes these problems to feminism and the establishment forces that support it. It can only identify the immediate causes, while taking the ultimate sources—wealth and the right to choose a mate—for granted. There are some signs of this emerging domestically, but they’re all just leftovers from the so-called “men’s circles.” Blogger “Red Pill” teaches you how to make money, work out, boost your testosterone, stop being a “suck-up,” and increase your “market value”—ultimately becoming a “winner in life” like them and living a polygamous lifestyle. If all else fails, use your passport to engage in cross-border “arbitrage” by seeking partners in low-income countries or those with more lenient standards. There’s a whole group of so-called “Passport Bros” online who do exactly that. This approach actually reinforces the law of the jungle regarding wealth and power: sex equals power. If this principle is put into practice, the path for most people will only grow narrower and narrower. The core of the problem lies in hypergamy, which creates an asymmetry of resources. This animal instinct is difficult to eradicate, but we must not succumb entirely to biological determinism. If we are to reshape mate-selection expectations, we must transform the economic structure, reduce the necessity of hypergamy, improve the external living conditions for young people, and ensure that mate selection ceases to be a survival defense mechanism. Only then can men and women be freed from their roles as providers and “breeding machines.” However, this will not happen naturally; it requires intervention through social mechanisms. We know that the marriage and dating crisis, the gender divide, and the declining birth rate are three interlinked crises spreading across the globe. To a large extent, they stem from modernization, industrialization, and urbanization. However, not all countries that have undergone these three processes face the crisis with the same severity; the Nordic countries are a notable exception. Through a social system characterized by high taxes and generous welfare, they have forcefully narrowed class disparities by providing paternity leave, public childcare, and equal rights for children born out of wedlock. They have also eliminated employment discrimination against women, reduced the costs of child-rearing, and provided equitable public goods. This has led to an almost complete decoupling of marriage, childbearing, and career development. It is no longer possible to achieve social mobility by marrying into wealth, and marriage is no longer the sole source of economic security. Parenting is guaranteed as a fundamental reproductive right and does not penalize women’s career advancement. As a result, the concept of gender equality is deeply ingrained in society, and no one scores you based on your assets during matchmaking. However, this inevitably leads to atomization, indifference, and isolation. The total fertility rate has remained stable at around 1.5 for a long time, showing remarkable resilience, and the female labor force participation rate is also high, which helps mitigate the impact of an aging population. Yet, high taxes come at the cost of economic vitality. Our stage of development and the path we’ve taken differ greatly from those of the Nordic countries. We’ve kept social security costs low and encouraged competition and intensive labor to build industrial strength. While this has created an economic miracle, core public goods—such as housing in prime school districts, quality education, and elderly care—have become highly commodified and marketized. Families and individuals must manage their finances meticulously. Children are no longer viewed as part of the labor force but rather as risky assets requiring concentrated resources for long-term investment, with uncertain returns. To avoid falling down the social ladder, every marriage has become a carefully calculated transaction. This micro-level rationality clashes sharply with macro-level societal needs, and over the long term, it will erode the foundation of the nation’s competitiveness. We have indeed explored many solutions: the “Double Reduction” policy, the “Housing for Living, Not for Speculation” initiative, childbirth subsidies, extended maternity leave, and tax deductions for childcare—among other pro-birth policies—have been rolled out in rapid succession, but their effectiveness has been limited. Young people’s expectations regarding marriage have shifted. As long as the fundamental rules of the game remain highly materialistic—prioritizing the reproduction of material assets over the reproduction of people—they cannot escape the calculations of asset gains and losses. Consequently, choosing not to marry or have children has become a means of risk mitigation. The population size and per capita capital stock of Nordic countries are not comparable to ours; we cannot simply replicate their high-tax, high-welfare model. But could we moderately increase capital’s contribution to public goods to restore the demographic foundation? I believe it is possible. Although capital flows freely, China’s supply chain integrity, exceptionally high coordination efficiency, and the productive capacity network formed by knowledge, technology, and a skilled workforce have reduced enterprises’ hidden costs. There are no viable alternatives globally, especially for advanced manufacturing industries that are highly dependent on R&D collaboration, rapid response, and industrial support systems. Essentially, this is an industrial stronghold that does not rely entirely on low tax rates. Therefore, moderately increasing the social responsibility of enterprises in high-value-added, high-end manufacturing, and highly automated sectors—and using some form of “robot tax” to reduce working hours in exchange for human leisure time—could create a certain amount of fiscal transfer payment capacity, thereby achieving a balance between retaining industrial chains and ensuring the sustainable evolution of the population.