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Alice Yan

A husband in eastern China who has filed for divorce because his cancer-stricken wife can no longer have children has triggered outrage on mainland social media.
The woman, who is suffering from leukaemia, does not want a divorce, so her husband is threatening to have affairs so he can get another woman pregnant.
The couple already have one child but the man wants more.
The divorce is one of several disputed cases being dealt with by a government-assigned mediator in Suqian, in the coastal province of Jiangsu north of Shanghai.
In 2021, China implemented a one-month “cooling off period” before granting a divorce in an effort to halt the country’s rapidly growing divorce trend.

Since then, Suqian has been dispatching mediators to persuade couples to rethink their decision.
So far about 1,000 couples have withdrawn their divorce applications after mediators intervened, reports said.
According to a mediator, surnamed Wu, a man filed a divorce appeal months ago citing as the reason his wife’s inability to give birth since her illness and that he has a strong desire to have a second child.
The couple already have a son, but the man said his longing for a second child is supported by his parents who want more grandchildren.
He said his wife has leukaemia and is having haemodialysis treatment regularly, so it is not advisable for her to become pregnant again.
During mediation, the husband said he was willing to reach a compromise, he would not divorce his wife and would continue to fund her medical costs as long as she did not try to stop him sleeping with other women.
The wife said she would neither agree to a divorce, nor put up with a cheating husband. That means their case will proceed to court, mediator Wu said.
The husband faced a backlash online for his attitude towards his wife after the story went viral online.
“It’s obvious that he just wants to dump his sick wife and is using the excuse that she cannot have a child any more,” one person said on Weibo.

“I wonder who would want to marry such a nasty man,” another said.
Divorce stories frequently trend on social media in China.
In December last year, a court in eastern Jiangxi province heard a divorce case filed by a man who discovered three children he had cared for during his 16-year marriage were not biologically his.


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Couple have son, husband and his parents want more children
Wife’s haemodialysis treatment means pregnancy not advisable


A man in China is trying to divorce his extremely ill wife, with whom he has a child, because he wants to be a father again but she is not able to give birth due to her illness.


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‘Nasty man’: China husband seeks divorce from cancer-suffering wife who cannot have second child, threatens to sleep with other women

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}Couple have son, husband and his parents want more children Wife’s haemodialysis treatment means pregnancy not advisable

Couple have son, husband and his parents want more children

Wife’s haemodialysis treatment means pregnancy not advisable