Beijing: China's divorce rate has gone up since 2003 and over three million couples have split last year, a phenomenon experts believe symbolises the awakening of feminism and social progress for women in the world's most populous country.
According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs latest report, over 3.6 million couples got divorced in 2014 and the divorce rate is 2.7 per thousand, compared with 2.6 per thousand in the previous year.
"The rise of the divorce rate showed that more women began to defend their rights to equality, which marks social progress," said Peng Xiaohui, a professor of sexology with Central China Normal University.
Marriage has been a male-dominated social norm. Society progresses when women can be happy outside of marriage or do not feel discriminated against when they raise their children by themselves, Peng said.
The divorce rate in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the highest at 4.61 per thousand, followed by Northeast China's Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces, state-run The Mirror reported.
About 2.60 lakh couples among a million who got married in 2012 have divorced. Most divorced couples are Uyghur people who have been influenced by their religious beliefs, which allow a husband
to have multiple wives, Li Xiaoxia, a professor with the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences said.
The local culture in Xinjiang shows more tolerance and support to divorced women, and they can more easily get remarried, Li added.
The report also said that the divorce rate of Shaanxi Province is 0.18 per thousand, the lowest in the country. "Previously, people regarded divorce as something humiliating. Now couples view marriage differently from their parents and they do not think that divorce is bad choice," a Jiangsu-based marriage registrar surnamed Wei said, adding that most apply for divorce due to personality clashes, interference from their parents and extramarital affairs.
China has a total population of nearly 1.4 billion.
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