WeChat video used to finalize divorce

As Chinese divorce hearings go, it was fairly standard - apart from the fact that one half of the couple was 2,000 kilometers away.

A civil court in Fuquan, a city in the largely underdeveloped southwestern province of Guizhou, finalized a breakup last week in which the husband was present in court, but the wife was in Tianjin, in northern China.

The proceedings were carried out in just 20 minutes over a WeChat video call, a first for the city, said Deng Chao, the judge who handled the case on Thursday last week.