Life of Guangzhou - Internet Matchmaking: A Promising Industry

People meet to talk and get to know each other with the help of an online matchmaking company in Dongguan, Guangdong province. [Photo: Informationtimes]

As more and more people complain that their fast-paced life leaves them no time for finding their best halves, internet matchmaking sites are just mushrooming up around the country, offering single people an ever time-saving and money-saving service of matchmaking.

In China, tens of thousands of people are becoming united through Internet matchmaking every year, reported cnr.cn on Tuesday.

Keen to maximize the potential market, Tian Fanjing, CEO of Baihe.com - one of China's earliest Internet matchmaking sites - launched his first branch office in Shanghai.

With Baihe.com, people enjoy a range of services catered to their personal needs by simply paying an annual club fee of six to seven thousand yuan, or 800 to 900 US dollars. Shanghai, a metropolis where elite people from home and abroad gather, is a perfect place to do matchmaking, Tian believes.

However, different from other matchmaking companies, Baihe.com insists on combining face to face talking with online communicating. "I have been creatively working on a Chinese way of matchmaking, after two years, experiments have proven that Chinese people prefer a combination of online communication and face to face encounter," Tian said at the launch of his Shanghai office in early December.

To protect clients from various scams and crimes, people who register with Baihe.com have to provide identification from the Ministry of Public Security, legalised proof of their marriage status as well as a mental evaluation from a psychologist. According to Tian, "All of these guarantee our efficiency and liability."

Annual profits from matchmaking industries in other Asian countries like Japan, South Korea and India are ten times greater than in China. "The market is huge, ready for us to dig further," Tian adds.

It is estimated that China's netizens will exceed 1.1 hundred million, and produce nearly 1,000 million yuan, or 135 million US dollars, in profits by 2008, with 70 percent of that amount expected to come from the Internet matchmaking industry.

[More China News]