One out of every five marriages registered by civil affairs authorities in China, ends up in divorce, according to a ministry of civil affairs report released in Beijing on Thursday.
According to The China Daily, the report says that 24.24 million people in the country tied the knot in 2009 and there were 2.47 million registered divorces, an increase of 8.8% on the previous year.
The report also suggests the crude divorce rate - the number of divorces per 1,000 population - was about 1.85/1,000 on the Chinese mainland in 2009, compared with 1.71/1,000 in 2008.
"In truth, the divorce rate has kept increasing over the past decades as the country has witnessed its economic growth. It is almost a side effect," the paper quoted Tang Jun, a social development and policy researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as saying.
According to official statistics the figure was almost 0.4/1000 in 1985, he said.
As the first generation of the only child family planning policy born during the 1980s enters marriageable age, the divorce rate is likely to soar in coming years, he warned.
"They are better educated than their parents, are more independent economically and have developed a stronger sense of self, which tends to wreck marriages more easily," he said.
Citing a regional survey conducted by his team, he said that extra-marital affairs have become a rising cause of divorce in the country, particularly in large cities. Rural women had better tolerance of extra-marital affairs compared with their city counterparts, he said.
A rising divorce rate, however, does not indicate that the Chinese have become less enthusiastic about marriage, he said. The latest report shows that more than 24 million people tied the knot last year, 2.28 million more than 2008.
