Newspaper coverage of Chinese–foreign marriage

This chapter analyses newspaper coverage of Chinese-foreign marriage in the PRC since 1979, providing insight into how the media present, reflect and manipulate social, economic and cultural change in China via their reportage. It examines newspaper accounts of Chinese citizens' motivations for entering into Chinese-foreign marriages and their evolution from the criticized focus in the early reform period on hypergamy or 'marrying up' to today's emphasis on 'love'. Newspaper discussions of the phenomenon of Chinese-foreign marriage in the PRC prior to the 2000s chiefly address the increasing number of intercultural marriages in the developing eastern seaboard regions of China, such as the cities of Haikou, Shanghai and Hangzhou. James Farrer discusses the emergence of this new pattern of intercultural marriage migration in Shanghai in the late 1990s. The depiction of Chinese women's 'hypergamous' behaviours closely links their upward social mobility to subsequent tragic consequences.