China couples told to cut wedding extravagance

China has called for the end of lavish wedding ceremonies as the government ramps up its campaign against gaudy displays of wealth.

Weddings, the ministry of civil affairs has said, should “integrate core socialist values and Chinese traditional culture” and shun anything extravagant. Officials stressed at a conference on wedding reform over the weekend that it was “necessary” to incorporate “Xi Jinping Thought”, the Chinese president’s political ideology, into wedding and marriage planning.

The ministry will ask local authorities to come up with “wedding etiquette” rules, following the example of one Chinese county that already limits guests to 200 and permits no gift worth more than 60,000 yuan (R120,384) – explicitly forbidding houses and cars.

Weddings have long offered an opportunity for the Chinese to show off their wealth – in a culture where “saving face” is important.

The ministry’s criticisms of this culture coincided with the long-delayed release of Crazy Rich Asians, a romantic comedy with an all-Asian cast in which one couple splurge $40m (R550.24m) on their nuptials. So extravagant is the film’s sumptuous wedding scene that some speculated it might never get past the censors of the Communist Party.

The film roped in $1.2m (R16.5m) at the box office in China over its opening weekend, less than the roughly $25m (R343.9m) it grossed upon its August premiere in the US.

The latest crackdown partly aims to reduce “bride prices,” which have been on the rise in China after four decades of the “one child policy” led to a shortage of women. Last year, Dengzhou, a city in Henan province, capped the cost for a bride at 30,000 yuan (R60,245). —