Lying, Cheating, and Gold-Digging: Transnational Dating Agencies as Moral Gatekeepers

• In Event: 1552 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 10: Marriage, Family, and Fertility in China

Abstract

The spread of the Internet is altering courtship practices and remaking marriage markets worldwide. Today, agencies that facilitate e-mail exchanges, romance tours, and marriages between women from developing countries and men from economically advanced countries constitute a $2 billion-dollar industry. While the popular media often depicts these agents as ruthless exploiters or even human traffickers in disguise, this paper argues that these images are oversimplified. My work draws on longitudinal ethnographic research (2008-2019) conducted at a transnational dating agency in southern China, which facilitates marriages between local women and men from English-speaking Western countries. The couples do not speak each other’s native language and rely on their agency staff to translate their email exchanges, and to facilitate their face-to-face meetings when the men travel to China to visit potential brides. My data shows that client-translator conflict occurs most often when the translators try to subvert clients who pursue dating strategies such as cheating, lying, or gold-digging, which short-circuit traditional norms of honesty, fidelity, and earnestness. Why are businesses taking on the role of social moral regulation in China today? This paper explores how China’s reform and opening-up affects business operations. Through the case of global internet dating and cross-border marriage, I illuminate the everyday struggles that employees face in balancing their materialistic desires against their moral conscience while living through a chaotic period of social transition in China, where many traditional norms, regulations, and mores are being upturned while new ones have not yet been fully established.

Author

• Monica Haiyi Liu, University of St. Thomas