CHINA:Divorce rates are soaring among the one-child generation, writes Clifford Coonan, in Beijing
The number of Chinese breaking the knot rose by 20 per cent last year, as the little emperors of the one-child policy showed they are no longer content to go along with traditional values.
Gone are the days of the unquestioning nuptials, when the woman bowed her head and did the right thing, as far as the families were concerned. Last year there were 1.4 million couples who divorced, up nearly 19 per cent, while there were 9.5 million marriages, up 12 per cent. Compare this to the early days of China's opening up in 1980, when there were 341,000 divorces nationwide.
In the years following the Communist Party's ascent to power by revolution in 1949, under the tutelage of Chairman Mao Zedong, marriage was considered a bourgeois institution that had a useful function in coordinating various family members. So far, so Marxist-Leninist.
There were always fields to be tilled, tractors to be built, ideological lessons to be taught. Who's going to think about a dress in these conditions? For the previous generation, marriage was something done in front of the local cadre, quickly and painlessly. If you needed to divorce, it took a couple of days, it brought a certain amount of shame on to the family but nothing serious. You went to the local official wearing your blue overalls and you were granted the official documents and that was it.
However, since the one-child policy was introduced, attitudes have changed dramatically. The now 30-something children of that exercise in social engineering are the "emperors" and "empresses" of today, who are more likely to put their needs before those of the collective. Or more pertinently, before the needs of the parents, aunts, uncles and cousins who paid for their upbringing.
Xu Anqi of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times of Beijing that increasing migration as well as longer working hours were factors. People were now looking for better quality marriages, rather than ones that would end in divorce.
One of the fundamental principles of communism in China was its moral rectitude. When the grey-suited guerrilla fighters swept to power in 1949, they were keen to do away with the moral turpitude of the Kuomintang era and replace with socialist principles of family, society and equality.
One of the big debates in China these days is whether the one-child generation are worthy inheritors of the generation of the Long March which drove the Kuomintang into exile.
As only children, the only children are doted on by parents and grandparents.
A law that took effect in 2003 allows couples to divorce in a day. Before then, couples needed permission from either their employers or community committees to divorce, and most stayed together to avoid public shame.
Chen Xinxin, an expert with the Women's Studies Institute of China, told the Shanghai Daily that many couples were not giving up on marriage, but "they are looking for marriages of higher quality".
She said that more Chinese women were financially and mentally independent and determined to be single. "This also contributes to a higher incidence of divorce." Many Chinese will hold off to get married until an auspicious year.
The current year of the pig, which lasts until early February, is particularly lucky and thousands of couples waited until 2007/2008 to get married.
This can only be good news for women. Many rural fathers consider having a daughter "raising a daughter for someone else" because of the dowry system, even though women earn more than men in most jobs in the cities these days.
Perhaps the power to divorce the men, who outnumber women in many parts of rural China to a disturbing degree, will give women greater say in their future.
Even though the sociologists were saying the increase in the divorce figures was down to broader issues, the popular press in China had its own view.
A private detective in the weekly China News Week said he was receiving a growing number of extramarital affairs cases.
"Our investigations usually prove suspicions of affairs and are more serious than the spouse suspects," said gumshoe Chang Lianyong.