Messy match or a mixed blessing?

By He Na (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-12 09:38

Statistics from Jilin International Marriage Registration Office show that about 1,500 mixed marriages are registered every year. Yi Yazhi, director of the office, says people should verify the legal status of their foreign friends before getting married.

With the deepening of China's reform and opening up, the number of cross-cultural marriages is on the rise.

"For every 100 new couples in the city, there are three mixed marriage ones," Zhou Jilin, director of the Shanghai marriage management office, says.

"We issue an average of 13 mixed marriage licenses in a week."

Statistics from the Shanghai Civil Affair Department show that 120 mixed marriage couples divorced during the first half of last year.

Shi Qingpan, a marriage expert from the Beijing municipal lawyers' association, attributes many such failures to the big age gap of the partners.

The number of Chinese women marrying foreigners far outstrips the number of Chinese men with foreign wives, according to a recent survey conducted by the East China Normal University in Shanghai.

It studied 21,000 mixed marriage couples who registered between 1996 to 2002 in Shanghai and found that Chinese women with overseas partners accounted for 90 percent of the total.

The average age for the man was found to be 42, while that for the woman was only 31.

Many Chinese women move abroad after their marriage and a divorce can place them in a very difficult situation.

"A healthy outlook on marriage is very important in a mixed marriage. The women who relocate abroad, need to have their own career and be economically independent," says Shi.

"It is very difficult to assess the jointly owned property in a mixed marriage. It is not easy to enforce the marriage settlement if a foreigner wants to cheat," says Liu Chunmei, a marriage lawyer from the Beijing Tongchuang Law Firm.

"Women who plan to marry foreigners must familiarize themselves with the laws of the countries from where their partners come," Liu adds.

Chen Xinxin, a marriage expert from the China Women and Children Association, says: "Mixed marriages can be both a sources of happiness and challenges. As long as people are bound by love and respect one another's privacy, such marriages can have a happy ending."