China’s marriage and birth rates have plunged to record lows but its divorce rates have skyrocketed in recent decades. In 2012, the divorce rate exceeded the marriage rate for the first time, and peaked at 4.71 million couples in 2019 before declining to 2.1 million by 2022. The recent decline is partly due to the delayed processing of divorce applications during the COVID-19 lockdown and the “cooling-off period” introduced by the government in 2021. In imperial China, divorce was a “male prerogative” and women had limited rights to divorce. At the beginning of the 1900s, influenced by Western ideas of freedom of ... (full story)