Hitched in Hong Kong: The Changing Face of Cross-Border Marriages

Hong Kong — Don’t go believing that the new film Don’t Go Breaking My Heart represents a new trend in Hong Kong.

In Johnnie To’s movie, two men from Hong Kong fall in love with a woman from mainland China, and she ends up marrying one of them. Such cross-border unions, in reality, may be on the decline, according to Hong Kong statistics.

But of those couples who do get married in Hong Kong, more of them are staying here instead of going to China, a reversal from the pre-handover era.

There were 22,330 cross-border marriages in 2009, down 55% from 2006, when there were 34,628 such unions as the graphic below shows.

The number of cross-border unions since the 1980s appears to have peaked in 2006. The lowest year, of the eight years given in the data set, was 1986, with only about 16,000 such marriages. (The Census and Statistics Department provided data for only 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.)

Of those cross-border marriages in 2009, 81% were of Hong Kong men marrying mainland women. That percentage remains the same, for the most part, as far back as 1986. Marriages between Hong Kong women and mainland men appear to be in the minority.

The biggest change over the more than two decades is that more cross-border couples are registering their marriages in Hong Kong. That suggests more are staying in the city instead of going to China, which was the case more than 10 years ago.

The census bureau compares Hong Kong marriage registrants with applicants of Certificates of Absence of Marriage Records (CAMR). It interprets CAMR couples as having an intention or purpose of marrying in the mainland, but it also acknowledges that certificate holders may not always lead to marriages. The CAMR is official proof that a couple was not married in Hong Kong, allowing registration for marriage abroad.

In the visualization above, the left column is Hong Kong marriage registrants and the right CAMR holders. The size of each year’s circle is evidence of the reversing trend in cross-border marriages.