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Divorce drove; China unties the knot

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With summer over and the days turning darker, many marriages also start to crack. In Nanjing alone, 18,000 couples were divorced during the first six months of this year, and the worst is yet to come.

A whopping 467 couples are divorced daily across our very own Jiangsu province, equating to a marriage ending every three minutes. According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, in 2012 the divorce rate in Nanjing almost reached 30 percent, a record high for the last three years. Some 18,000 couples were divorced in the first half of the year alone. Statistics show that the level of divorces increases drastically during autumn and wintertime; as if the rain, dust and darkness are not enough, Nanjing will see the number of divorces skyrocket in the coming months.

It is young couples who are the source of such high numbers. A divorce within one year of tying the knot is no longer rare; put down to a lack of understanding between partners due to a youthful rush into marriage, family disputes, and the educating of children.

Recently, discussion has been arising in China and abroad of another possibility; that of the negative effect that commuting has on people’s happiness levels, causing conflicts between couples and increasing the likelihood of extra-marital affairs. The fact is corroborated by people living in the countryside who are less likely to divorce compared to their peers in the big cities. In the countryside, couples are able to spend more time together by working together or by the absence of the daily commute. City dwellers, on the other hand, face a high-pressured and stressful work environment, long commutes and a general lack of free time to spend with their respective partner.

In blaming a lack of understanding, consider the expectations of eligible Chinese women. A Chinese woman will look for a man who has a stable financial background or a decent job, since financial stability is the most crucial prerequisite for Chinese women and their future family. The reigning perception is that love is secondary; something that may develop over time. However, in line with common Western beliefs, in the end it is hard, if not impossible, to have a marriage which is only based on materialism.

In other cases the main issue is simply rushing into marriage. Some Chinese women are seeking men through agencies and immediately marry as soon as they find a prospective husband they believe can financially support them. In these cases, it might only take four weeks from the initial meeting to the actual marriage, causing much misunderstanding between the speedy spouses.

As if personal disagreements are not enough of a strain on the survival of any marriage, politics have unwittingly increased the incentive to return to independence. In Beijing a loophole in property policies is the main reason for high divorce rates as couples are deciding to legally end their marriage in order to escape tax payable on their apartments. In March the Chinese government passed a new law that allows couples with two properties who divorce to put each house in one person’s name and then sell them tax-free under certain conditions. When all is done and dusted, the fictitious divorce can be reversed by simply re-marrying. One need only look at recent figures to get an inkling of the extent of this farce. During the first nine months of this year, over 39,000 divorces took place in the country’s capital, an increase of 41 percent compared to the same period a year prior.

All these issues have had a major impact on the historical development of divorce in China. During the first nine months of 2011, China had more than 2.8 million divorces, equating to more than 10,000 divorces per day. The drastic surge becomes obvious when looking at the China of the 70s, during which time the divorce rate was only a couple of hundred thousand per year.

So divorce is increasing. Not perhaps the bad news proclaimed by many. Thirty years ago, marriage in China was based on an economic cooperation plus the propagation of the family and the local cooperative. Becoming a divorcee had a tremendously negative effect on a person’s reputation. In modern China, everything is different; with private savings and a change in mentality divorce has become a lot more common. Also the one-child policy has changed the importance of the family unit. In other words, new-age Chinese are able to separate from their partners because it does not affect them as severely economically or socially as before. Nowadays, people feel free to divorce for their own happiness.

Though a divorce might be good choice for both parties, it has a major impact on those with offspring. According to studies, separation often has a negative influence on the children who usually need both their parents to be there for them. Statistics also show that second-time bachelors might feel particularly lonely after the divorce because in most cases the children will stay with the women, who also have a better social life than their ex-husbands. Financially, the impact is immense; a new house, car and food are expenses previously shared by the couple but but for which each side now need to pay themselves.

For better or for worse, almost one in three Chinese marriages is not going to end happily. Yet is it this the very definition of happiness that modern Chinese society is now beginning to address. While the increasing numbers of divorcees is an unmistakable trend, that people are actively starting to seek happiness if they do not have it signals surprising new ways of thinking within the very customary views of marriage in China.

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