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Jevans Nyabiage

A young Malagasy woman was stopped at Madagascar’s Ivato International Airport last month as she prepared to travel to China for a proposed marriage, according to local media reports citing police. She had reportedly been promised 10 million ariary (US$2,300) once she arrived and married a Chinese man.
The case led police to investigate a suspected network involved in arranging similar marriages. Four people were detained, and police reportedly recovered false stamps, documents and 10 Malagasy passports.
Investigators said several women might have already travelled to China through the network.
These arrangements are often marketed as a solution for Chinese men struggling to find a partner at home. Men are told they can travel abroad, pay a matchmaking fee and bride price, then return home with a wife.
But recent cases reported in Malawi and Madagascar show that Chinese men can face fraud, extortion and criminal investigation, while women recruited as brides can face deception, coercion and human trafficking.
Such cases have prompted warnings from Chinese embassies and raised questions about whether they are isolated incidents or part of a broader, emerging pattern.
Cai Chen, a doctoral researcher in anthropology at the Universite libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, said Africa was a newer destination in a longer history of Chinese men seeking wives abroad.
Cross-border matchmaking had previously involved women from Southeast Asia, Pakistan and former Soviet countries, while more recent cases have emerged in African countries including Egypt, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“One important reason is … the ‘marriage squeeze’ in China,” Chen said.
Many men from rural or disadvantaged backgrounds struggle to marry because of the need for a high caili – a sum of money paid by the groom-to-be to the bride’s family as a way to secure the marriage and show wealth – and expectations that they should own a home and often a car.


This particularly disadvantages men with little money or insecure jobs. Meanwhile, men who remain unmarried involuntarily could face increasing pressure from their families and communities to marry and continue the family line as they grow older.
“For some economically marginalised Chinese men, marrying in Africa may therefore appear more affordable than marrying in China or even through matchmaking networks in Southeast Asia, where agency fees, bride wealth and other costs can also be high,” Chen said.
Wei Wang, a University of Amsterdam postdoctoral researcher who has studied marriages between Chinese men and Ethiopian women, said services offering foreign wives might sell an “imagined geographical solution” to men who struggled to marry in China.
“Someone who feels relatively ‘unmarriageable’ at home may be told that his nationality, income or ability to pay will make him more desirable elsewhere,” Wang said.
About a month after the Madagascar airport case, the Chinese embassy in Malawi warned citizens not to trust advertisements promoting “marriage by purchase” or the idea of “buying a wife”.
In a statement published on its social media account on September 7, the embassy said several Chinese citizens had recently fallen victim to marriage scams overseas after trusting cross-border matchmaking services and paying large bride prices. However, it did not say where the cases occurred.
“Paying large sums to purchase a marital relationship can easily create legal risks involving human trafficking, financial extortion and threats to personal safety,” the embassy warned.
Chinese law prohibits international marriage introduction services or making a profit from such activities.
Similar cases were reported in Malawi in October last year, when the Chinese embassy said several citizens had paid intermediaries and bride prices before facing extortion and threats. It warned that such arrangements could lead to human trafficking investigations, imprisonment and financial loss.


In a separate case in May 2023, Malawian police stopped two Chinese men from leaving the country with two local women after they obtained marriage certificates without waiting the required 21 days.
The men and a Chinese female accomplice were convicted of human trafficking and sentenced by a Lilongwe court to six years in prison in February 2024.
Malawian women have also reported being deceived or forced into marriages after reaching China.
A 2023 investigation by Malawi’s Platform for Investigative Journalism documented the case of Ethel Moyo, who said she was sent to China at 17 for an arranged marriage.
Moyo alleged that agents changed her age to 25, instructed her to claim she was travelling to study and sent her to Shaanxi province, where she married a 33-year-old Chinese man. She said an agent later pressured her to remain in the marriage. Moyo’s present circumstances could not be confirmed.
In Madagascar, China’s embassy said in March last year that Malagasy public security authorities had uncovered a human trafficking case linked to cross-border marriages and arrested several Chinese citizens.
Wang’s research in Ethiopia and southern China’s Guangzhou showed that some marriages often grew from work, migration and social connections rather than paid matchmaking. Being Chinese did not automatically make men attractive husbands, and African women did not necessarily see China as a desirable place to live, Wang said.
Chen said the cases in Malawi and Madagascar should not be dismissed as completely isolated incidents, but cautioned against overstating the scale of the phenomenon.
“They appear to be part of a broader, emerging pattern,” Chen said. “But it is still too early, and there is too little reliable evidence, to claim that brokered marriages – or the abusive practices sometimes associated with them – are widespread across Africa.”


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Authorities clamp down on cross-border matchmaking schemes as lonely Chinese men look overseas after failing to find a bride at home


Authorities clamp down on cross-border matchmaking schemes as lonely Chinese men look overseas after failing to find a bride at home.


Madagascar

Malawi

Africa

Pakistan

Chinese men warned over bridal scams as ‘marriage squeeze’ drives wife search in Africa

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Authorities clamp down on cross-border matchmaking schemes as lonely Chinese men look overseas after failing to find a bride at home

Authorities clamp down on cross-border matchmaking schemes as lonely Chinese men look overseas after failing to find a bride at home