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China divorces down by 70% after authorities implement ‘cooling off period’

蘋果日報 2021/05/19 05:40


China registered a 70% drop in divorces in the first quarter of this year following a controversial law that imposed a mandatory 30-day “cooling off period” for couples looking to separate.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs said 296,000 divorces were registered in the first three months of 2021, down more than 70% from 1.06 million in the previous quarter. The same time period in 2019 saw 1.05 million divorces registered in the country.
China enacted a new law in January requiring couples seeking a divorce to wait for 30 days before the procedure could be formalized. The couple is encouraged to undergo “reconciliation” and the divorce process could be halted if either spouse changes their mind.
Quarterly data showed that the Chinese province of Sichuan had the most divorces, followed by Henan and Guangdong.
Dong Yuzheng, president of the Guangdong Provincial Population Development Research Institute, said the cooling off period was a major cause of the decline in divorces.
The numbers might be higher in Sichuan and Henan because they were the home of many migrant workers, whose marriages often suffer due to the long separation, Dong said.
Chen Aiwu, a law professor at Nanjing Normal University in Jiangsu province, agreed that the drop in divorces had to do with the new system, but it was still necessary to refer to divorce litigation statistics to get the full picture.
From January to mid-April, 10,303 couples in Jiangsu seeking divorce subsequently gave up their application.
The cooling off period sparked anger in China when it was first announced, with some critics saying that it might trap vulnerable parties in abusive relationships.
The number of marriages in China also fell dramatically in 2020, with authorities citing the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country registered 8.13 million marriages last year, the lowest figure in 17 years. Around 2.13 million couples got married in the first quarter of 2021.
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