China Makes Marriage Much Easier & Divorce Even Harder

By Yinmai O'Connor, August 27, 2024

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China is making it easier to get married and harder to get divorced in the government’s latest move to address the country’s declining birth rate.

The civil affairs ministry recently released a draft amendment to the Regulation on Marriage Registration, which is open for public feedback until September 11.

The changes are meant encourage young people to get married and to help “build happy and harmonious families.”

The emphasis is obviously on the ‘family’ part – as China’s birth rate has more than halved since 2016, and is now at an all-time low.

READ MORE: China's Birth Rate Declines for 8th Consecutive Year

The government believes one of the main factors in this continuous decline is the fact that the younger generation is increasingly opting out of marriage, and it is anticipated that the number of marriages will reach a 45-year low in 2024. 

READ MORE: RMB and Pets on the Rise While Marriages Decline

The new regulations would allow couples to get married using just their ID cards anywhere in the country. 

Previously, couples were required to have their official household registration (hukou), and they could only get married where they are registered.

The revised rules would make it significantly easier for people to get married – considering the massive number of citizens who no longer live in the place at which they are registered.

The household registration system has controlled access to education, social services, and job opportunities for decades, and this is the first sign of the strict system loosening its policies.

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Divorce is already a tedious process in China – with courts tending to process applications slowly – and the new revision would add a 30-day ‘cooling-off period’ during which applications can be withdrawn.

This extension to the divorce procedure has drawn more attention than the changes to the marriage regulations – the topic has now been read more than 700 million times on Weibo.

The government has recently been encouraging women to return to more traditional roles, but as more women in China become well-educated and financially independent, many now see marriage as a trap and view these new restrictions as the government's way of tightening the restraints.

Although it is possible that these new changes to the marriage and divorce processes will help increase China’s birth rate, the public has made it clear that, when it comes to the question of starting a family, the current economic challenges of raising a child are far more of a deterrent than how to tie or untie the knot.


[Images via Ai]

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