Divorce Trends and Patterns in China: Past and Present

SINCE THE PROMULGATION of the second marriage law of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1981, many divorce cases have caused a great stir and the public debate in the Chinese press on past and present trends and patterns has continued. In response to the growing concern about the new upsurge of divorces Chinese sociologists have intensified their research work into marriage, divorce and family relations. It needs to be remembered that research on these issues was interrupted during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 and probably has not been fully revived since. Studies are currently being conducted at three levels into the complex social phenomenon of divorce: by a national society sponsored by the All-China Women's Federation, local sociological institutes and sociology departments of universities, and a few hundred full-time researchers. A national symposium on marriage and family affairs was held in 1984. Following a brief review of the evolvement of the marriage law of the PRC from legislations under previous regimes, this paper analyzes divorce trends and patterns from 1949 up to the present. Legislative changes, economic reforms and political unrest are identified as the major variables responsible for the waves of divorce that swept the country in the early 1950s and thirty years later. Throughout the period under discussion, the divorce rate has been kept relatively low, with the legal procedures being geared towards reconciliation rather than dissolution of a marriage. Equally important, China's divorce patterns, including causes of divorce, age at divorce, duration of marriage until divorce, sex of petitioner of divorce, and remarriage reflect a mix of changes amid continuities. Traditional ideas are found to be slow to recede, in particular in rural China. It is for these two primary reasons that China's divorce rate is still very low by world standards and is expected to remain so.