Divorce cases in China skyrocketing - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

More than 848,000 couples registered for divorce at civil affair bureaus across China in the first six months of the year, according to statistics published by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. This figure represents a rise of almost 10 percent year-on-year. According to annual statistical reports, the number of couples divorcing - either by registering at civil affair bureaus or going to court - has been rising continuously since 2003, when the revised Regulation on Marriage Registration took effect. "The revised regulation has to some extent facilitated more couples getting divorced at civil affairs bureaus," said Xu Anqi, a researcher with Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, in an interview with the Mirror Evening News. However, Xu said the divorce rate has been on the rise for decades, reports China Daily. The rate was 0.03 percent in 1979, 0.07 percent in 1990 and roughly 0.1 percent in 2000, climbing to 0.21 percent in 2003. A report by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in June this year revealed that there was an annual rise of 7.6 percent in the number of divorces from 2005 to 2009, with 2.47 million couples divorcing in 2009. According to Xu, the major cause of this rise is the decreasing cohesiveness between married couples.