Going Solo: An Analysis of China’s ‘Single Economy’ through the Date-renting Industry

ABSTRACT

The article explores China’s growing “single economy” through a case study of the date-renting industry, which has, in recent decades, become a thriving part of Chinese society. It first outlines China’s changing demographics and the scholarship centred on the rising “single” population. Next, the article clarifies the concept of the single economy and the theoretical approach for this study. It shows that an increasing number of businesses have developed new products and services to target the “single market” in China. Third, the article introduces the research methods for this study. Through a close examination of various date-renting websites, the article identifies the logic of the date-renting industry and the strategic presentation of “date-traders” online. It argues that the boundary between emotions and capitalism has become increasingly blurred as these two seemingly opposing forces are now converging, constituting a unique phenomenon in China’s single economy. This manifests as an economically moulded dating culture intertwined with new, intricate social and personal relations – a by-product of China’s demographic shifts and rapidly growing market economy.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• dating
• date-renting
• single economy
• commodification of intimacy
• single market
• emotions
• emotional capitalism
• leftover men
• leftover women

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the National Library of Australia for granting me the ASG (Asian Studies Grant) residency in Canberra from January to February 2020. This enabled me to access the library’s rich resources of Chinese and Asian studies with relevance to this topic. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and the journal editor David Hundt for their valuable feedback.

Notes

1. The terms “singles” and “singletons” are used interchangeably in this article. However, strictly speaking, “singles” refers to people who may or may not live alone and “singletons” emphasises those who live by themselves only (Klinenberg, 2013, p. 38).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pan Wang

Pan Wang is Senior Lecturer in Chinese and Asian Studies, University of New South Wales. She is author of Love and Marriage in Globalizing China (2015, Routledge). Her recent publications include “Women’s body, intimate politics and feminist consciousness amid COVID-19” (in J. Golley, L. Jaivin, S. Strange (Eds.), China Story Yearbook: Crisis, ANU Press, 2021); “Chinese-International intimate relations: An Australian case study of migrant marriage and divorce” (Journal of Sociology, 2020, with E. Jeffreys); and “Love in China (1950-now)” (in C-H. Mayer & E. Vanderheiden (Eds.), International Handbook of Love: Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Perspectives, Springer, 2020).