Kinship, partner choice and emotional compromise in contemporary China: a narrative review

Marriage choice in contemporary China takes place within kin relationships and unequal opportunities to find a partner. This narrative review distinguishes meeting routes, consent, material matching, premarital affection and marital well-being using 36 works in a reconstructed literature archive. Retrospective marriage histories document a decline in arranged marriage between 1950 and 2014, with continuing introductions through personal networks. A synthesis of 92 reports involving 59,122 married respondents and an analysis of national survey data both report higher average marital satisfaction over their observation periods, although the estimated changes differ substantially. Urban ethnographies describe parental screening by class markers and the use of financial support in wedding negotiations. Rural studies document restricted opportunities and concessions on observable partner or household conditions. These findings describe constraints on meeting, refusal and material choice. They do not measure how often people marry with affection below their own minimum or what follows from that choice. A spouse's rank among seriously considered, available partners is also distinct from whether affection meets a personal threshold. Prospective studies that record both before marriage, together with consent and feasible alternatives, could connect marriage formation to later relationship quality.