TAIQIAN COUNTY in Central China's Henan province has reportedly issued a guideline that imposes restrictions on the amount of money people can spend on weddings and funerals. For example, it says a man cannot pay his would-be wife's family more than 60,000 yuan ($8,645) as betrothal gift. Southern Metropolis Daily commented on Saturday:

Although "non-compulsory", Taiqian's guideline says a wedding banquet should not have more than 10 tables of guests and five or fewer vehicles should be used for a wedding, and village committees are poised to carry it out. The possible penalties and intervention also contradict the guideline's "non-binding" nature.

The question is: What if residents refuse to follow the administrative guideline in which they had little say? Even if the rules manage to be listed in community codes without any opposition, they will be difficult to implement.

Since jobs in village committees are intrinsically part-time and in most cases taken by villagers themselves, those "holding office" in such committees will struggle to oversee weddings and funerals. They also risk creating unwanted hostility if the restrictions are forcefully implemented.

Betrothal gifts are part of a deeply rooted tradition in China. Many unmarried men toil in cities to earn enough money to pay for an "extravagant" wedding, just to prevent other villagers from "looking down on" them. And some parents spend years of savings and even rack up huge amounts of debt just to get help their sons get married.

Forbidding people to hold a grand wedding could cost men a bride, because men greatly outnumber women in China, and women often demand cars, houses or other assets from their husbands-to-be. Controversies surrounding extravagance aside, local governments are not supposed to interfere in people's legitimate choices.