China’s Bid to Shore Up Marriage Vows Stirs Debate

Miss Wang is 23, involved with a married man and nonchalant about the idea of being branded a criminal. After all, she reasons, society already slaps so many other epithets on her sort--mistress, concubine, home-wrecker--that one more hardly seems to matter.

“People have always treated folks like us as immoral or even illegal. I’m used to it,” said Wang, a saleswoman whose affair has gone on for three years. “What can I do? Love is love; you can’t help it.”

But not if some conservative elements in China have their way. In a debate that would cheer any American crusader for “traditional family values,” the world’s most populous nation is pondering proposals to hold “third parties” such as Wang liable for destroying marriages and to toughen China’s liberal divorce laws.

The proposals are among a raft of ideas being considered by the Communist government for overhauling its marriage regulations, a vague and outdated body of 37 legal articles unchanged since 1980. After 18 years of dizzying development and social change, scholars are trying to update the regulations to accommodate modern concepts such as domestic violence and the equitable distribution of property between divorced spouses in China’s new consumer age.

Although experts stress that any revisions are months away, word of the more controversial suggestions has leaked out and sparked a public stir. The debate has exposed an increasingly tolerant attitude toward private conduct in China--and an accompanying backlash.

The opposition to stricter rules governing bedroom behavior has been surprisingly vocal from a populace usually cautious when expressing discontent and prudish when talking about sex.

“If extramarital affairs and so-called third parties are considered criminal, it will be a setback,” writer An Dun declared. “Using the law to judge human emotions and feelings means violating the popular will.”

She should know. The 29-year-old columnist for a Beijing newspaper has interviewed hundreds of people about their relationships and compiled some of their stories into what is one of China’s top-selling books this year. Her somewhat misnamed tell-all, “Absolute Privacy,” details real-life deceptions, heartbreaks and adulterous romps to hundreds of thousands of enthralled readers.

Its popularity reflects the groundswell of public interest in sex and other personal matters in China, a fascination spawned by heady reforms that have loosened economic and social controls in the last two decades and shifted the focus from collective to individual behavior.

Gone are the ubiquitous baggy Mao suits of yore, deliberately designed to hide the sex of the wearer; today’s youth don tight jeans and prowl about discos where dancers writhe in cages with barely enough clothing to make a Mao cap. Forget Mao’s little red book; more people are likely to cite his unauthorized biography, written by his personal doctor, who alleges that the Great Helmsman himself regularly disported with numerous young women.

Prostitution, virtually extinct after the 1949 Communist takeover, is widespread once again. Extramarital relationships are reputedly so common in southern China that the city government of go-go Guangzhou issued a circular earlier this month urging that men who practice bigamy, “cohabit with concubines” or provide financial support for mistresses be “sent to labor camps for re-education,” the official China Daily reported.

The public’s liberalized attitude toward sex dismays more conservative members of society, some of whom fear what they label a Western-style moral collapse lurking in the shadows and are advocating tougher marriage and divorce standards to prevent it.

China’s rate of divorces to marriages, although substantially lower than that in the United States, has jumped from about 4% in the late 1970s to 13% last year. Splitting up is a relatively easy matter: Couples can go their separate ways in as little as 30 days simply by informing their neighborhood committee of a loss of “mutual affection.” Even a contested divorce is usually resolved within a year, scholars say.

The suggested amendments to the marriage law call for a three-year separation for quarreling couples, with some kind of counseling or mediation, to make sure divorce is the last resort. Sexual fidelity in marriage would be a legal requirement, with compensatory damages to be paid by the cheating spouse and the “third party” if the marriage dies.

Negative public reaction to these proposals was swift.

“Even law cannot assure that every marriage will have a happy ending, especially when passion fades or turns into bitterness,” one editorialist, Qing Qing, wrote in the China Daily. “A legal obligation to be faithful to each other can do little to secure rapport or prevent betrayal between two people.”

In an independent Internet survey of nearly 8,000 people--70% of them men--6 out of 10 respondents opposed a mandatory waiting period for divorce. Even more, 82%, disagreed with making extramarital sex illegal, while 62% rejected prosecution of “third parties,” perhaps the most-talked-about proposal submitted to the Beijing’s Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Such controversy exasperates the experts--not all of them conservative--who are trying to overhaul the law.

“The reports that the [proposed] new marriage law focuses on divorce and extramarital affairs are both one-sided and inaccurate,” complained Yang Dawen, a law professor at People’s University in Beijing and leader of the task force charged with making recommendations to the government. “The purpose of new marriage legislation is to fill gaps in the law.”

Those gaps are considerable. The 1980 guidelines, quickly drafted after the turbulent 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, say little to nothing about spousal abuse, annulments or--of prime importance under China’s one-child policy--custody rights.

As a result of China’s gradual opening-up, marriages to foreigners have increased, but the old law is silent on how to handle them. Nor does it offer guidance on what to do if a spouse is missing, incapacitated or insane.

And although a vague pronouncement on fair divorce settlements worked when the average Chinese couple owned “a pillow, pillowcases and a basin,” said professor Chen Mingxia, more specific rules are necessary now that many couples share furniture, a microwave and even a car.

“We’re on the verge of the 21st century, but the current marriage law doesn’t fit the demands of a modern society,” said Chen, a senior legal research fellow at the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the task force.

When it comes to breakups, Chen sounds more conservative--”We hew to the principle of guaranteeing the right to marry and opposing frivolous divorce”--but she is no knee-jerk reactionary. She thinks that the mandatory separation period should be two years, not three. She rolls her eyes at the idea of punishing adulterers and “third parties”--an idea mooted by others, not her, she noted. And she believes that the rising divorce rate, far from being a sign of moral decay, is actually evidence of progress and empowerment.

“People’s conceptions are changing. They’re concerned about their individual rights,” Chen said. “That’s a good thing.”

She emphasized that the task force--officials, scholars and women’s advocates, among others--is still in the process of formulating ideas; any proposed revisions to the legal code will be subject to public and official debate. “The marriage law is something that has a profound impact on every individual, so it must be put out for everyone to discuss,” Chen said.

Individual freedom, if not societal approval, is what drives Miss Wang, the saleswoman in love with a fortysomething man who already has a wife and child. “Everybody [thinks] it’s wrong. But . . . it’s not a simple right-and-wrong question,” said Wang, who asked that her full name not be used.

Even if the government were to impose legal sanctions against adultery, Wang added, “I don’t believe that someone will come and arrest me just for that.

“Besides, we’ve always been hiding. We never dare to publicize our relationship, and I think it’ll remain that way for who knows how long.”