(NewsNation) — China has launched a state-sponsored dating app that matches users based on background information uploaded by the app.
Unlike other apps such as Tinder, Hinge or Bumble, where users swipe left or right on profiles, Palm Guixi does the swiping for them, Gizmodo reported.
The app is available for residents of Guixi, a city in China’s Jiangxi province. It includes a feature for organizing blind dates, and local governments are using it to host events to encourage singles to mingle, according to CGTN America.
The app’s creation reportedly is an apparent bid to boost the marriage rate that has steadily declined over the past decade. A greater number of young people in the country are choosing to stay single, and last year, China recorded the fewest marriages since 1986, according to the state-run Global Times.
One of the main initiatives of the Jiangxi pilot is to combat high “bride prices,” the Guardian reported. Although the country prohibits “the exaction of money or gifts in connection with marriage,” the traditional practice of a potential groom offering a bride’s family cash still continues, particularly in rural areas.
Online reactions to the app have been mixed, according to the Guardian, with one user on Weibo writing that Chinese people are expected to “breed like pigs.”
China’s national population sank last year for the first time since the 1960s, and the capital Beijing this week reported a population decline last year, the first in 19 years.