China proposes law to make it easier to marry, harder to divorce

HONG KONG –

China has put together a revised draft law that will make it simpler for couples to register their marriage, while filing for divorce will become tougher, a move that drew scorn from netizens and became a top trending online topic on Thursday.

The draft, aimed at building a “family friendly society,” was released by China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs this week for public feedback. People are able to submit comments to the ministry until Sept 11, it said.

It comes as policymakers struggle to encourage young couples to get married and have children after the country’s population fell for two consecutive years.

The proposed law removes regional restrictions for marriage seen in the previous law where marriages had to be handled at the household registration location of the couple.

Divorces will be subject to a 30-day cooling off period during which, if either party is unwilling to divorce, they may withdraw the application, terminating the divorce registration process, the draft said.

“It’s easy to get married, but hard to divorce, What a stupid rule,” wrote a netizen on Chinese social media platform Weibo 9898.HK, attracting tens of thousands of likes.

The regulation aims to “promote the importance of marriage and family,” reduce impulsive divorces, uphold social stability, and better protect legitimate rights of the parties involved, Jiang Quanbao, a professor at the Institute for Population and Development Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong University, told the state-backed Global Times.

The number of Chinese couples who got married in the first half of this year fell by 498,000 from a year earlier to 3.43 million, the lowest since 2013, as more young people put off getting hitched, official data showed.

Marriage is typically seen as a prerequisite for having children due to widespread policies, including one that requires parents to present a marriage certificate to register the baby and receive benefits.

Many young Chinese are choosing to stay single or put off getting married due to worries over job security and their future outlook as growth in the world’s second largest economy slows.

Reporting by Farah Master and the Beijing newsroom; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan