分类： society

Australia’s five-year national census, carried out on August 11, 2024, marks a landmark milestone for LGBTQ+ inclusion across the country, as it introduces the first-ever questions about sexual orientation and current gender identity for respondents aged 16 and older. This iteration of the 66-question survey is also the first national census conducted under Australia’s center-left Labor Party government since the party returned to power in 2022, following nine years in opposition.

The addition of these new questions was not without political controversy. Two years ago, the current Labor government initially dropped the planned questions, labeling them as potentially divisive, and reaffirmed that position as recently as August 2024 when Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles stated the government would avoid deviating from the 2021 census question set to preserve social cohesion. However, just days after this announcement, the government reversed course amid intense public backlash from LGBTQ+ rights advocates and internal criticism from progressive members of the Labor caucus. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — who has participated in Sydney’s annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras twice since taking office — confirmed the reversal in a public radio interview, reinstating the two contested questions ahead of census day.

Both new questions are optional, mirroring the longstanding optional question about religion that has appeared in every Australian census since 1911. For the sexual orientation question, respondents can select from pre-written options: straight, gay or lesbian, or bisexual; additional options include “don’t know”, “prefer not to answer”, or a blank space to write in a self-described orientation. For gender identity, respondents who identify with a gender different from that recorded at birth can select man, woman, nonbinary, “prefer not to answer”, or write in another gender identity.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which is responsible for designing census question wording and administering the national count, found widespread public demand for the new questions during pre-census public consultations. ABS Chief Statistician David Gruen explained the reasoning behind making the questions optional to Australian Broadcasting Corporation, noting that while collection of this data is deeply important for many segments of the population, other respondents prefer not to share this personal information.

Demographic experts point out that Australia is playing catch-up to other comparable high-income democracies that have already collected this data through national censuses. The United Kingdom included similar questions in its 2021 census, New Zealand added the questions in 2023, and Canada carried out its own inquiry with these questions just three months before Australia’s 2024 count. Liz Allen, a leading demographer at Australian National University, noted that the previous conservative Australian government refused to act on calls to add the questions, leaving the ABS unable to move forward with the change before the 2024 count. Allen also added that the current questions have a gap: they do not include a specific option for intersex people, who are born with biological sex characteristics that do not fit typical binary definitions of male or female.

By comparison, the United States’ most recent 2020 decennial census only allowed two binary gender responses and did not ask specifically about sexual orientation, though it did permit same-sex couples to list their relationship for the first time in the household section.

The ABS projects that 85% of respondents will submit their census forms online this cycle, up from nearly 80% in 2021 when much of Australia was under COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Paper forms are available on request, and field outreach workers are deployed to support participation among people experiencing homelessness and residents of remote regional areas. While completion of the core census is legally required, with fines of up to 257 Australian dollars per day for non-compliance, the new gender and sexual orientation questions remain entirely voluntary. As of the Monday before census day, more than 3.6 million completed forms had already been submitted, with officials expecting a total of 11 million completed responses by the close of the collection period.

Decades of skewed population dynamics in China have created a fertile ground for a new type of predatory fraud: the “flash marriage” scam, which preys on tens of millions of single men who face a massive shortage of potential female partners. For 37-year-old Wang Zhuang, the glossy advertisements from Guizhou-based matchmaking agencies felt like the last chance he had to build a family. After years of facing steep requirements for marriage — including demands for owned property, a car, and a high bride price in his home region of Hebei — he had nearly abandoned hope of finding a spouse.

The agencies promised exactly what Wang craved: demure, family-oriented women from low-income backgrounds who would settle down permanently after marriage, with no need for years of slow courtship. Lured by these guarantees, Wang traveled more than a thousand kilometers to Guiyang, the capital of southwestern China’s Guizhou province, where the unregulated flash marriage industry has exploded in recent years.

Wang was quickly matched with a woman who fit every description he had given. Agency staff enforced strict rules: clients were banned from exchanging private contact information during the short, supervised meetings, with steep fines for violations. After just four or five 10-minute meetings, Wang agreed to marry, paying more than 300,000 yuan ($44,000) in bride price, plus additional costs for the wedding that pushed his total spending to nearly 500,000 yuan. It was only months after the wedding that the deception unraveled: debt collectors began contacting Wang about his new wife’s hidden outstanding loans, and an investigation of her personal documents revealed a long list of lies. She was a former karaoke hostess who had been married three times already, had three children, lied about her age, and lived with a serious sexually transmitted disease. When confronted, she immediately offered a divorce but refused to return any of the bride price. By the time Wang returned to the matchmaking agency to demand answers, it had vanished without a trace.

Today, more than a year after the wedding, Wang’s life remains in tatters. He rents a small apartment across from the former agency district in Guiyang, where he has turned his home into a informal refuge for other victims of flash marriage scams. His parents blame him for the financial ruin, he struggles with chronic insomnia and anxiety that have left him unable to hold steady work, and he remains trapped in a lengthy divorce process that shows no sign of ending quickly. “My whole family has been thrown into chaos,” Wang says. He now posts warning videos on Chinese social media and travels across the country to push authorities for stronger action against the scammers.

Wang’s tragedy is not an isolated case. It is a direct outcome of a demographic crisis decades in the making. Following decades of China’s one-child policy, paired with a long-standing cultural preference for sons, the country now faces a gap of 30 million more men than women — a number larger than the entire population of Australia. For men in rural areas, smaller cities, and those entering their late 30s and older, the shortage of available partners has left few options. Traditional bride prices have skyrocketed in regions with severe gender imbalance, putting marriage out of reach for many working-class men. This context has made the quick, one-stop “flash marriage” model offered by unregulated Guizhou agencies extremely appealing to vulnerable singles.

As the scam has grown, it has drawn the attention of national Chinese authorities. Between January 2024 and March 2025, Chinese prosecutors processed cases involving 1,546 individuals linked to illegal activity in the matchmaking industry. This month, five national government departments jointly launched a nationwide crackdown on the sector, responding to widespread public outcry over the fraud. In one high-profile prosecuted case, a Guizhou-based agency used employed karaoke waitresses as fake potential brides to defraud 128 men out of more than 2.5 million yuan ($371,000).

One agency manager who agreed to speak with reporters on condition of partial anonymity defended the industry, claiming that less than 10% of agencies engage in fraud, and that local matchmakers rely on personal village knowledge to vet potential brides instead of formal background checks. He claimed that the sector merely connects women from Guizhou, where local families often had multiple children including daughters despite the one-child policy, to wealthier men from central and northern provinces that face far more severe gender gaps. “Three days with the right introduction can beat three years of dating,” reads one typical advertisement for the service.

But for victims like 59-year-old Xu Rulin from Jiangxi province, who spent nearly 500,000 yuan to arrange a flash marriage for his son, the industry is nothing but organized fraud. Xu’s son married his bride just seven days after their first meeting, but she ran away less than two weeks after the wedding, after extracting an additional 140,000 yuan for a business, an iPhone, and wedding jewelry. While the bride and agency owners have been arrested, Xu remains in Guiyang months later, still fighting to recover his lost life savings.

Legal experts note that prosecuting these cases remains extremely difficult under current Chinese law, which lacks a specific criminal statute for this type of marriage fraud. To win criminal charges, victims must prove that the bride and conspirators never intended to enter a genuine marriage, a high bar that is hard to meet, because suspects often argue that they entered the marriage in good faith but later realized they were incompatible. “In situations like that, the line becomes blurred. Relationship issues are difficult to disprove,” explains Fan Binghe, a lawyer with the Nanjing Office of Beijing Jingshi Law Firm who specializes in these cases. Many sham agencies also shut down immediately after scamming victims, leaving little to no trace to pursue for financial recovery.

For Wang and the dozens of other victims staying in his Guiyang refuge, there is no clear end in sight. Most have lost their entire life savings, and many remain trapped in unresolved divorce proceedings that prevent them from moving forward with their lives. “After going through something like this, I don’t even know if I can still get married. It was already hard for me to find someone. And now I’ve spent so much money. I won’t consider it now,” Wang says. Staring at piles of legal documents, he adds, “I don’t know when this will be resolved, so I can restart a normal life. It feels endless.”