The matchmaking profiles appear each morning, sorted by birth year.

One reads: Daughter, born 1994. College diploma and employed at a construction enterprise. Annual income: 50,000-100,000 yuan ($7,000-$14,000). Height: 170 centimeters. Kindhearted, generous, and even-tempered.

All routine, until the final pitch: “We hope to find a like-minded partner for her here. If you believe your child would be a good match, please feel free to reach out.”

Those closing lines underscore the premise behind a new wave of dating platforms shifting focus away from singles and toward their parents. These apps let parents create bios, filter candidates, and initiate contact with other families, often before their children are even told.

Designed for middle-aged users, platforms like Perfect In-Laws and Family Match feature large-type layouts, stripped-down interfaces, and filters that prioritize education, income, property ownership, and household registration. Some also offer offline services, including phone interviews and professional matchmakers, to help parents vet and connect with potential in-laws.

With marriage rates falling and more young Chinese delaying the decision, many parents feel growing pressure to intervene — driven by demographic shifts, deep-rooted expectations around family continuity, and a belief that their children are either too busy or too passive to find partners on their own. While some young adults accept the help, others push back, frustrated by what they see as outdated values and unwanted control.

Huang Yixuan, founder of Jinsheng Youxing, a matchmaking company based in the southwestern city of Chengdu, says demand across China is only growing. Between 2019 and 2024, she says, parents became the majority of her clients — now making up 65% of users.

“Parents of single children aged 28 to 38 tend to feel more urgency about marriage than their children do,” Huang says, whose company began with a dating app for singles but has now launched a separate platform just for parents.

The urgency has shifted how matchmaking begins in China’s booming online dating industry, which grew from around $373 million in 2014 to $1.3 billion in 2023, according to iiMedia Research.

Instead of encouraging their children to date, many parents now take on the early stages themselves. Experts describe this shift not as a return to arranged marriage, but a front-loaded process where families act first and bring their children in later.

The final decision may still be the child’s, but by then, much of the process is already in motion. In most families, the outcome lands somewhere in between — where parents push, children resist, and eventually, both sides adjust.

Proxy dating

Nancy Xu learned her parents had signed her up on one of the new parent-targeted matchmaking platforms when several profiles of potential suitors appeared on WeChat. All bundled together with just a single message: “Review when free.”

Stunned, the 27-year-old from the southern Guangdong province took to social media to vent. “You wouldn’t believe how wild parents are getting in the dating scene now,” she wrote in the post, which quickly gained traction.

“Parents screen candidates first,” she explains. “Then they tell their children once they’ve gotten familiar.” Her parents use Chengjia Xiangqin, or “Family Match,” one of several platforms built specifically for parental matchmaking.

Xu says her parents send her a new suitor almost every day. When her replies seem too short, they complain she’s not trying hard enough. She once sent them screenshots to prove otherwise. They called her messages “stilted,” and compared them to their own warm exchanges with the suitor’s parents.

“The constant urging makes me feel overwhelmed,” she says.

Despite her resistance, Xu concedes one advantage: parental picks often boast stronger “material conditions.” When parents choose partners, they prioritize factors like education and family background, which Xu and her peers value less than appearance.

Offline, many parents share those priorities, but not everyone is ready to trust a digital intermediary.

On a weekend in May, dozens of parents gathered at Shanghai’s matchmaking corner in People’s Park, flipping through plastic binders of printed dating résumés. Out of 17 parents Sixth Tone interviewed, only three had used dating apps. “You can’t trust the profiles,” one mother said. “The fees are high, and no one follows through.” Most said in-person meetings still felt more direct — and more serious.

Others are cautiously testing new tools. Li Dengyun, a 52-year-old from the eastern Anhui province, has spent the past year looking for a match for her daughter. Her daughter isn’t in a hurry. But she is.

“She’s 26 already. That makes me start to worry,” Li says.

She started with family and friends. “Marriage is a lifetime commitment,” she says. “You need to vet the family and character thoroughly.” But when introductions ran dry, a friend suggested Family Match.

Li was intrigued. The platform offered a stream of eligible men with degrees, jobs, and solid family backgrounds. But she hesitated. “I’m afraid they’re scammers,” she says.

In the end, Li posted her daughter’s profile but didn’t initiate contact — a half-step into the digital dating pool.

Parental guidance

On Hongxian Qinjia, or “Red Thread Matchmaking,” a mini-program and app built by Huang Yixuan’s company for parent-led spouse selection, love starts with a checklist. The name nods to the Chinese legend of a red thread that connects destined partners.

Parents begin by entering detailed information about themselves and their children. The platform arranges phone interviews and invites users to offline locations for identity and data verification. Once approved, they receive 20 recommended profiles daily, selected based on matching filters.

To speed up the process, the app offers a paid “Super Recommendation” feature, with pricing tiers from 98 yuan for five attempts to 168 yuan for 10. A 365-yuan annual membership unlocks further perks — including 20 additional daily profiles, the ability to send 1,000 messages daily, and unlimited access to contact other parents directly.

“After parents understand the service, they often take the initiative to introduce their children,” Huang says. “This model significantly increases matchmaking success.”

She points to two recent success stories. One couple married just 35 days after meeting; another became exclusive in 41. In both cases, the families shared near-identical backgrounds — education, careers, income, even hometowns. “In China’s marriage market, the principle of matching social equals still carries significant weight when families evaluate potential matches,” Huang says.

Sociologist Du Shichao sees this as the latest turn in China’s long evolution of matchmaking.

“It used to be arranged marriages, then offline introductions — now it’s gone online,” says Du, an associate researcher at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

But unlike youth-focused dating apps, these platforms operate more like structured services. Parents upload their children’s information and photos, often without paying for full access. They chat through intermediaries, browse selectively, and treat the process less as dating than as negotiation.

“It’s two separate digital worlds,” Du says. “I think parents are just entertaining themselves.”

Still, he adds, the final decision often rests with the children. But that doesn’t mean that they’re immune to parental pressure — as Xu has learned firsthand.

Recently, Xu broke up with her last boyfriend after her parents decided his family wasn’t “suitable.” When they told her to “find the next one immediately,” she even resisted, saying: “Why don’t you just pick one and then call me to sign the marriage certificate?”

Now, they’ve threatened to cut off financial support if she refuses to cooperate. “I can’t survive without them yet,” Xu says. “When I’m financially independent, I won’t have to compromise. But for now, I have no power.”

Xu says she’s open to her parents’ advice — when she asks for it. What she resents is being sidelined. “I don’t reject their help,” she says. “But I reject being treated like I can’t think for myself.”

Additional reporting: Fu Xiaoqing; editor: Apurva.

(Header image: Visuals from VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)