Poverty aid is not meant to be used as a dowry

A wedding motorcade of classic British TX4 taxis drives along the street in Jiangsu province's capital Nanjing. Wang Luxian / For China Daily

SOME STATE-LEVEL poverty-stricken counties are reportedly limiting the dowries grooms can offer to would-be brides. Beijing News commented on Saturday:

It is understandable that some local governments want to ensure that impoverished residents are not burdened by the need to come up with an expensive dowry. But they are not supposed to interfere with residents' wedding arrangements.

Besides, such intervention is unlikely to work. The costly dowries are the result of the increasing number of men in rural areas who remain unmarried in their 30s, because more local women prefer to travel to bigger cities and stay there for a taste of urban life. Limiting dowries will not change the gender imbalance in the countryside, where men have to offer more to get a partner.

Local governments, of course, can and should dissuade locals from spending too much on a wedding.

But, more importantly, they need to more strictly supervise poverty-alleviation loans, which are sometimes used by applicants to throw an expensive wedding. This is misuse of public money that is intended to improve people's livelihoods, and only keeps people ensnared in a vicious circle of poverty.

It is therefore necessary for governments in underdeveloped areas to ramp up the supervision of the way impoverished residents use financial assistance, which is by no means provided to be squandered freely.