Bigamists be warned: national database aims to catch you out

Marriage authorities have announced moves to create a national database in an attempt to clamp down on bigamy.

Shanghai, Beijing and Shaanxi province are among the first regions to pool their marriage records this year in a pilot scheme that should see a national database in place by 2015.

Under the scheme, prospective brides and grooms will be able to check whether their prospective partners were previously married in their hometowns, or whether they have a secret spouse.

Marriage law is cumbersome on the mainland due in part to wedding certificates being linked to individuals' hukou - the household registration that ties mainlanders' to their place of birth.

But the economic revolution has driven a massive migration, taking countless millions from rural provinces into the cities. With a national marriage registry, officials and citizens could check whether a marriage certificate applicant already has a spouse elsewhere. National statistics published in June show nearly one in five mainland marriages now ends in divorce. Although 24.2 million mainlanders tied the knot in 2009, 2.4 million couples separated.

The Durex Global Sex Survey 2005 found 15 per cent of Chinese respondents had had extramarital affairs, lower than the worldwide average of 22 per cent. There was no breakdown between males and females.

A separate survey of urban mainlanders published in the United States the same year found 20 per cent of married men and 3.9 per cent of women had been unfaithful within the previous 12 months. Newly affluent businessmen increasingly see the keeping of a 'second wife' as a status symbol.