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International News

Lack Of Marriage Records Aids Rise In Chinese Bigamy

February 01, 2011 posted by Steve Brownstein

China's increasingly mobile society has seen a significant increase in the number of people taking second spouses, and the illegal practice of bigamy has been made a lot easier by the lack of a nationwide database of marriage records.

Some 23 provinces have already set up their own intra-provincial marriage database systems and a system covering the whole country should be ready by the end of 2015, vice-minister of Civil Affairs Dou Yupei told the China Daily.

“It will not only provide technical support to improve our marriage management and services, but also will act as a protective screen against illegal acts, such as bigamy and the concealment of marriage,” Mr Dou said.

In one of the more spectacular cases, Qiu Xiaohua, the former head of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), was labelled a “vile social and political influence” and expelled from the Communist Party for bigamy in 2007.

Meanwhile, the Guizhou Metropolis Daily reported the case of Hu Qinxian in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, who married two men in two years.

Ms Hu first registered with a man surnamed Pan in November 2008 and gave birth to a daughter. She left Mr Pan without divorcing him, and married another man in a different village six months later. Mr Pan learned of the second marriage and took her to court, and this week Ms Hu was given six months in jail for bigamy.

Beijing, Shanghai and northwest China’s Shaanxi province will be the pilot areas for the marriage database.

Chen Wei, a lawyer with Yingke Law Firm in Beijing, said the new database was necessary in the “strangers’ society” created by high mobility.

“Some people have used current administrative loopholes that make it difficult to check someone’s marital status,” said Mr Chen.

Also helping the system was the fact that more people were using online bookings to register their marriages. Mr Dou said in Shenzhen in southern China, around 70 per cent of applicants made online reservations.

As well as keeping tabs on potential bigamists, however, Mr Dou said it was important to stress the stability of the institution of marriage itself.

“The divorce rate has been rising, which reflects our citizens’ growing freedom. But families’ disintegration is usually traumatic for both partners and their children. And it will cause social problems when divorce rates become too high,” he said.

 

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