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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Opinion -> 
More fragile marriages
    2015-07-20  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    WHEN Liu Xiang, one of the best-known athletes in China who won gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles at the 2004 Athens Olympics, announced on June 25 the end of his nine-month marriage with actress Ge Tian, few were surprised. Believing their marriage as a bad match from the beginning, many of Liu’s fans thought that Ge just wanted to walk down the aisle with the Olympic champion to increase her own popularity.

    Liu’s short-lived marriage serves as new evidence of China’s ever-rising divorce rate. The latest information released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs shows that 3.67 million Chinese marriages ended in divorce in 2014 alone, a 3.9 percent increase over the previous year. In comparison, 1.96 million couples filed for divorce in 2011. China has seen a rising divorce rate for 12 years in a row.

    According to reports, there has been such a surge in the divorce rate that registration offices across China are struggling to cope with the rush. In the southern city of Guangzhou, couples who are filing for divorce have to wait a month for their turn.

    Divorce was rare in China until the nation embraced the policy of reform and opening up. Many factors contributed to the relatively stable marriages. First of all, the law discouraged divorce, making divorce hardly practical for spouses. In most cases, a woman’s economic dependence on a man made the wife think twice before she took the plunge. Traditional ideas about female virtue and wifely duties also convinced women to see a broken marriage as a stigma.

    That’s why couples born before the 1980s would not untie the knot unless both sides agreed that they had come to the end of the rope.

    Yet divorce has become a piece of cake for men and women born in the 1980s. Referred to as the “me generation,” they see marriage more as a negotiation or an act of impulse than the fruit of love or a partnership for life.

    “Lightning weddings,” or instantaneous weddings, are all the vogue today, which often end in correspondingly fast divorces, as Liu’s did. How short could a marriage last? It only took 25 minutes for a young couple to register for marriage and then for divorce, according to a professor at China University of Politics & Law and honorary chairperson of an institution of marriage and family law.

    Some surveys show that divorce rates are as high as 20-30 percent for couples born in the 80s. Their reasons for a divorce may sound bizarre to their elders: a partner’s inability to do housework, addiction to online games, snoring problems, a refusal to tell the partner how to access bank accounts, etc.

    These are just proximate causes. The ultimate reasons include growing personal freedom, couples’ financial independence, people’s growing emphasis on wealth over love and diminishing spousal respect and tolerance.

    

    Marriages are getting increasingly materialistic rather than spiritual in China, but this has reasonable explanations.

    A wedding is a must. Without a sweet home, there will be no sweet love. Owning a home, however, is beyond most young couple’s means nowadays. Soaring housing prices have made home ownership the first criterion for a spouse-to-be.

    In addition to owning a home, for the sake of face, everything else must be decent enough: a lavish wedding banquet, an expensive car, having a baby as soon as possible. The spending list is so lengthy that there will never be enough money. All this means a deep pocket for the husband or the wife, or both. It’s no surprise, then, that spouses-to-be are talking less about admiration and appreciation than possessions and calculation.

    For most young people, the cruel fact is “no money, no honey.”

    The family is a social cell, and a stable society depends on millions of stable families. The rising divorce rate, as well as the fact that marriage is becoming a pipe dream for many young people, will have a negative impact on society. We must not take it lightly!

    The bottom line is fairness and social justice. The young should have their share of economic growth and social wealth distribution.

    (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)

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