According to the Associated Press, long-delayed plans to put people’s marital status online for easy reference are finally coming to fruition:
China’s exploding wealth has created a culture of secret mistresses and second wives. Now officials are putting marriage records online so lovers and spouses can check for cheaters.
State media on Wednesday said Beijing and Shanghai will be among the first places to put marriage databases online this year. The plan is to have records for all of China online by 2015 ….
Bigamy is illegal in China, and corruption inspectors with the ruling Communist Party have said several officials have been guilty. That includes the former head of the National Bureau of Statistics, Qiu Xiaohua. He was called a “vile social and political influence” and expelled from the party in 2007 ….
One study of extramarital affairs in China, published in the U.S. in 2005, said 20 percent of 1,240 married men surveyed in urban China and 3.9 percent of 1,275 married women said they had had an affair in the past 12 months.
