A woman leaves her husband and child after family disputes. Photo: CFP

Zhou Yuan (pseudonym) is waiting for a court's final verdict on her divorce, a process which she said was no less than a "war." On her Weibo microblog, she publicized her husband's real name as well as the details of his infidelity.

Zhou and her husband have been married for less than two years, she told the Guangzhou-based South Review biweekly. In 2012, the 29-year-old Zhou met her husband and married him a couple months later.

But soon, disagreements arose. Zhou said she and her husband fought all the time. He began having an affair and did not return home most of the nights. So Zhou began to publicize her shattered marriage on Weibo. All she wants is a quick end to the marriage, she said.

In the past, people might be surprised that marriages could be ending after such a short time. But in today's China, she's only one of many. In 2013, 3.5 million couples filed for divorce in China, a 12.8 percent increase compared to 2012, and the tenth consecutive year in which the country's divorce rate rose, according to the statistics released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China.

The past 10 years have seen changes in Chinese attitudes toward marriage that have helped give rise to the increasing divorce rate. Divorce used to be something shameful, a secret to be kept. But now videos of couples fighting over an affair are popular on video-sharing websites. The change is being driven by increasing wealth and the end to the stigma of divorce.



For the children

Traditionally, the goal of marriage in China is to produce offspring. A traditional emphasis on children's development has kept more than a few unhappy marriages together, in order to avoid damaging children emotionally, the South Review reported.

But these factors are less important nowadays than they used to be. Parents now understand that it does children no good if their mother and father are constantly fighting.

Most parents in China believe that family background and the environment in which children are raised are powerful factors influencing a child's future. Keeping a family together for the children is no longer a reason for couples to stay married.

 "Couples in China hardly ever go to court to fight over custody," Song told the South Review.

Coming to an agreement on custody issues is much easier now than it used to be. Typically, both parents want the child to live with the parent who is more secure financially. Some wives might even look upon children as a burden, since a child might make it more difficult for them to remarry.



Fighting over the money

As in so many other things, questions of money come to the forefront.

Song Jian, a divorce lawyer, described a case in which the wife didn't want the house or custody of the child. All she wanted was to stay married, since she thinks everybody should only get married once in a lifetime.

"In recent years, fewer people have [those kinds of] ideas," Song told the South Review.

In cities like Beijing, rocketing housing prices have sharpened the edge on divorce settlements, since an uneven result could leave the two parties in distinctly different income brackets.

To increase their share of the pie, soon-to-be divorcees have started to hide or transfer parts of their shared wealth.

Recently, a woman presented receipts in court showing that she had spent the 500,000 yuan ($80,000) she shared with her husband. But the husband's lawyer quickly found the claim was false. Two of her receipts conflicted, showing her taking their dog to a pet hospital in Beijing at the same time she was on vacation in southern China. She forged the receipts in order to keep the money for herself.

Song said that some people begin preparing as much as a year in advance of their court appearance. He told the South Review that one of his clients was the head of an up-and-coming company. When the couple's case went to court, the husband presented the judge with a certificate saying that the company was owned by his father, and that he was only an employee, effectively locking the wife out of any company money.

A family built on the basis of material wealth can be solid after a fashion, but is more often frail, the South Review reported. If the wealth disappears, so does the marriage.

Another of Song's cases was a marriage that only lasted two months. The woman accused her husband of deceiving her. Before they registered for the marriage, the woman thought she was marrying into a rich family. But that turned out to not be the case. She hoped to end the relationship as soon as possible without hindering her remarrying.

The widening gap between social classes can also make marriages unstable. One netizen wrote a comment on Weibo that "when seeing others with cars and houses, the couple will whine. In the long term, that's bad for the relationship. The gap between the rich and ordinary people can put a lot of pressure on marriages."

To save money, some couples even go so far as to fake their divorce, Sina reported. Recently issued rules on home purchases state that if the couple owns two houses and subsequently gets divorced, neither needs to pay heavy taxes when selling either of the houses, making a fake divorce the most efficient way to save money.



An end to stigma

In the past, Chinese society tended to discriminate against divorced women. As society has developed, this has also changed.

"Marriage isn't seen as sacred anymore. People in China have come to accept divorce as a way to get relief. Married or unmarried people can both live a happy life," said Tong Xin, a sociology professor at Peking University.

Zhou, the woman who publicized her divorce on social media, decided to divorce her husband after she found out he was cheating on her. She took her story public to win sympathy, directly counter to Chinese tradition holding that couples should never let other people know family scandals. 

After she married her husband, Zhou found her mother-in-law constantly interfering in the new couple's lives. They began to argue. Then Zhou became pregnant; shortly afterward she found out about her husband's affair, she told the South Review.

At first, Zhou wanted her husband to put an end to the affair, so that they could at least try to build a happy life together. Her husband, however, continued the affair, and continued to slander her. It was only at this point that Zhou decided to file for divorce.

Zhou said that she just wants to get the money she deserves, and bring an end to this terrible marriage as soon as possible, she told the South Review.

Zhou's case is a reflection of changing attitudes among China's women.

According to a report in The Legal Mirror, 60 percent of divorce court proceedings are now initiated by women. Women aren't afraid of divorce any more.

One judge told the Legal Mirror that a new generation of women born after 1980 is, for the most part, economically independent. They can live on their own following a divorce, something which was not possible for women in the past.

Women facing domestic violence are also increasingly encouraged to divorce and sue their husbands.

One 50-year-old woman surnamed Wang accused her husband of domestic violence. They had been married for almost 30 years, and her rights had been violated many times, she told The Legal Mirror.

She said that the stigma around divorce had caused her to keep silent. Only with changing attitudes did she finally feel ready to fight for her rights after years of abuse.

South Review - Agencies
Newspaper headline: Love on the rocks