Million yuan bride price and intergenerational patriarchy: Negotiated agency among contemporary women in Putian, China

In Putian, Fujian Province, bride price levels have surged dramatically, with some cases reaching the million-Yuan mark. Conventional explanations—viewing high bride prices as remnants of patriarchal tradition that would decline with modernization—fail to account for the data. Based on in-depth interviews with young men and women at marriage contemplation stages and with their parents from diverse backgrounds, this article argues that escalating bride prices should be read as a reinforced form of intergenerational patriarchy. In this system, marriage decisions, resource allocation, and reproductive responsibility are organized along intergenerational hierarchies more than conjugal relations. Women are not merely passive victims; they exercise negotiated agency—renegotiating the meaning and use of bride prices, delaying or resisting family-arranged matchmaking, and reshaping marriage forms—while remaining embedded in family structures. These practices reveal tensions and vulnerabilities within intergenerational patriarchy under marketization and social stratification. By foregrounding negotiated agency, the study contributes new empirical material and theoretical perspectives to feminist scholarship on patriarchy, marriage, and gender subjectivity in contemporary China.