This Chinese city is creating database of its singles, holding dating parties

The authorities of China's northern city of Luanzhou has recently announced that they are building an extensive database wherein personal information of the region's unmarried men and women will be entered.

Owing to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic that has changed the normalcy of lives, local officials of Luanzhou told the Vice that matchmaking parties for civil servants and workers at state-owned enterprises were being held, with blind date sessions also in the process.

Two group dating parties have already been organised this year, with a virtual dating party set to be held on New Year's Eve on Douyin app - the original Chinese version of popular app TikTok.

In a statement published on the Sino Weibo microblogging site this week, a representative of the local municipal government said that it hopes to "bring single men and women together through activities," according to the Vice report.

Moreover, highlighting the positive traits of Luanzhou as a "youth-friendly city," authorities told the Vice that there have been requests for a dating community from the members of the public.

However, several people wrote on Weibo showed scepticism towards the effort. "It's going to take a lot more to convince modern China to go back to the old ways. People are just too content with their lives to drastically change," the Vice reported one user writing.

Some other users also blamed the Chinese government's one-child policy that saw the authorities heavily penalising families violating the rule.

Meanwhile, gender ratio remains a massive problem in the country with data released by the Chinese government this year showing that the country has 35 million more single men than women. Furthermore, the number of singles in China is likely to cross 90 million in few years, according to the Vice report.