Divorce rate soars as couples find it easy to quit
Ending a marriage is a simple formality, and rising wealth has been matched by an increase in break-ups
Alice Yan 03 July 2011
Two years ago, Helen Zheng’s 58-year-old mother finally called it quits on her marriage after her husband had been cheating on her for 10 years.
She looks at the divorce as a blight on her life. The issue is rarely broached with outsiders and she even feels self-conscious around friends and family, said her daughter, 33, from Shanghai.
“But my mother felt relaxed at the end of the long saga, despite having struggled for years to rescue her marriage,” Zheng said, speaking for her mother, who declined to be named. “She knew if she didn’t divorce and stayed bound to my father, she would never be happy.”
Zheng said her parents met in the 1960s when her mother was sent to a village in Anhui from her home in Shanghai - one of the tens of thousands of young students ordered by Chairman Mao Zedong to receive “re-education from peasants”. They married and lived in Tongling, Anhui. But soon enough she found that her husband, a clerk, started having an affair.
The result, albeit slow to come, was a divorce that has added to a surge in marital collapses across the mainland in recent years. The increase is causing concern.
The annual divorce rate has jumped from just more than 200,000 in the 1970s to 3.2 million in 2007, 3.56 million in 2008, 4 million in 2009 and 4.5 million last year. The latest civil affairs statistics show that 465,000 couples across the mainland divorced in the first quarter of this year, up 17.1 per cent from the same period last year.
To break it down further, about 5,100 people were divorced each day from January to March, and past statistics show that the first quarter in a year is usually the low season for divorce, meaning the number for the full year could be even higher.
Xu Anqi, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, points out that the divorce rate has risen with its growing prosperity. Furthermore, she said, mainland citizens take divorce lightly, and more couples choose to split rather than try to work out their problems.
A report published by the Shanghai-based Xinmin Evening News even coined the term “divorce with no reason” to describe the rising trend of people simply divorcing when they feel like it.
Divorce has become so common that it is even a theme for TV series. One such popular drama is called Divorce Chinese-style.
On the mainland, divorce requires only that both parties sign a document at their local Civil Affairs Bureau if there is no dispute over the assets. Either party can apply for a divorce.
Chen Yong, a 32-year-old sales manager, shocked his parents in early 2009 when he decided to divorce only five months after tying the knot. But when he explained his reason - that the couple’s characters didn’t match, his wife didn’t do any housework and didn’t take care of him, and she had hidden her love history - his parents understood and supported him.
The two, both natives of Jiangxi and working in Shanghai, had met on a long-distance train journey in 2006. They eventually fell in love and married in October 2008.
“Soon afterwards, I found I didn’t know her very well. She didn’t love me but loved my money, regarding me as her ATM,” Chen said.
He said the divorce had brought him no trouble in his personal or professional life. He has dated some women since, and they don’t care that he is a divorcee. He attributed this to the public’s tolerant attitude towards divorce. If it wasn’t so acceptable nowadays, he said, he would have opted to stay in an unhappy marriage.
But while couples often cite differences in character when divorcing, analysts point out that extramarital affairs are increasingly the culprit.
A two-year survey released last month by the Wan He Lian He Law Firm in Changsha, Hunan, found that half of more than 500 divorced couples split up over an affair.
Li Jian, a lawyer at the firm and the founder of the Anti Third Party Association, said society should treat the damage to families caused by “third parties” - a formal term in China referring to men or women caught up in a love triangle with a married couple - as a matter of great importance.
The consequences of third parties’ adultery range from family disputes to severe criminal activities such as blackmail, libel and even murder. It also has a negative impact on young people, Li said.
Huang Lin, who researches feminism at Capital Normal University in Beijing, said “third party” groups are common on the mainland and, in strong contrast to Westerners, who often regard affairs as shameful, many Chinese men are happy to show off their mistresses.
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Divorce rate soars as couples find it easy to quit
Ending a marriage is a simple formality, and rising wealth has been matched by an increase in break-ups
Alice Yan
03 July 2011
Two years ago, Helen Zheng’s 58-year-old mother finally called it quits on her marriage after her husband had been cheating on her for 10 years.
She looks at the divorce as a blight on her life. The issue is rarely broached with outsiders and she even feels self-conscious around friends and family, said her daughter, 33, from Shanghai.
“But my mother felt relaxed at the end of the long saga, despite having struggled for years to rescue her marriage,” Zheng said, speaking for her mother, who declined to be named. “She knew if she didn’t divorce and stayed bound to my father, she would never be happy.”
Zheng said her parents met in the 1960s when her mother was sent to a village in Anhui from her home in Shanghai - one of the tens of thousands of young students ordered by Chairman Mao Zedong to receive “re-education from peasants”. They married and lived in Tongling, Anhui. But soon enough she found that her husband, a clerk, started having an affair.
The result, albeit slow to come, was a divorce that has added to a surge in marital collapses across the mainland in recent years. The increase is causing concern.
The annual divorce rate has jumped from just more than 200,000 in the 1970s to 3.2 million in 2007, 3.56 million in 2008, 4 million in 2009 and 4.5 million last year. The latest civil affairs statistics show that 465,000 couples across the mainland divorced in the first quarter of this year, up 17.1 per cent from the same period last year.
To break it down further, about 5,100 people were divorced each day from January to March, and past statistics show that the first quarter in a year is usually the low season for divorce, meaning the number for the full year could be even higher.
Xu Anqi, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, points out that the divorce rate has risen with its growing prosperity. Furthermore, she said, mainland citizens take divorce lightly, and more couples choose to split rather than try to work out their problems.
A report published by the Shanghai-based Xinmin Evening News even coined the term “divorce with no reason” to describe the rising trend of people simply divorcing when they feel like it.
Divorce has become so common that it is even a theme for TV series. One such popular drama is called Divorce Chinese-style.
On the mainland, divorce requires only that both parties sign a document at their local Civil Affairs Bureau if there is no dispute over the assets. Either party can apply for a divorce.
Chen Yong, a 32-year-old sales manager, shocked his parents in early 2009 when he decided to divorce only five months after tying the knot. But when he explained his reason - that the couple’s characters didn’t match, his wife didn’t do any housework and didn’t take care of him, and she had hidden her love history - his parents understood and supported him.
The two, both natives of Jiangxi and working in Shanghai, had met on a long-distance train journey in 2006. They eventually fell in love and married in October 2008.
“Soon afterwards, I found I didn’t know her very well. She didn’t love me but loved my money, regarding me as her ATM,” Chen said.
He said the divorce had brought him no trouble in his personal or professional life. He has dated some women since, and they don’t care that he is a divorcee. He attributed this to the public’s tolerant attitude towards divorce. If it wasn’t so acceptable nowadays, he said, he would have opted to stay in an unhappy marriage.
But while couples often cite differences in character when divorcing, analysts point out that extramarital affairs are increasingly the culprit.
A two-year survey released last month by the Wan He Lian He Law Firm in Changsha, Hunan, found that half of more than 500 divorced couples split up over an affair.
Li Jian, a lawyer at the firm and the founder of the Anti Third Party Association, said society should treat the damage to families caused by “third parties” - a formal term in China referring to men or women caught up in a love triangle with a married couple - as a matter of great importance.
The consequences of third parties’ adultery range from family disputes to severe criminal activities such as blackmail, libel and even murder. It also has a negative impact on young people, Li said.
Huang Lin, who researches feminism at Capital Normal University in Beijing, said “third party” groups are common on the mainland and, in strong contrast to Westerners, who often regard affairs as shameful, many Chinese men are happy to show off their mistresses.
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