Happier Abroad Forum Community

MarcosZeitola wrote: I don't think there's that much of a difference anymore between an educated and wealthy Chinese woman and a Western woman, in terms of dateability. They don't exactly seem like marriage material to me, hence why they have to consult with match makers and group dating, where parents swap pics of their sons and daughters like some in-person tinder meat-market. Like in virtually all countries, the only solution (unless you get lucky and win the lottery) is to go rural.

The leftover women are being left over for a reason. Let them die lonely spinsters, it's their own choice and the consequences are entirely theirs.

yohan wrote:the person who bought the house, paid for it completely and registered it BEFORE marriage free of loans will be the sole owner after divorce. At least after divorce you will be in your own home - your property is protected. That's really better than in Western countries.

droid wrote:

yohan wrote:the person who bought the house, paid for it completely and registered it BEFORE marriage free of loans will be the sole owner after divorce. At least after divorce you will be in your own home - your property is protected. That's really better than in Western countries.

NICE

Ghost wrote: Anyway, all that said, China is not easy to figure out, and as with all countries, you have to figure out that particular society's lies, decipher them, and then go from there. You can't take...anything...at face value. And that goes for jobs and marriage and even just day to day business.

Ghost wrote: Yes, this is a good indicator that China is relatively safe. It doesn't make and enforce misandrist laws like in the U.S.

Yohan wrote:
Chinese young women mention often how rich they are, but with a deeper look, you will realize soon, that the girl has nothing, and all what makes her so rich belongs to her father, her uncle, the husband of the ex-wife of her father and so on. Chinese families often keep their wealth together, but are unwilling to share it - except for the basic needs - with a non-productive daughter or niece, and asking her in a very direct talk to look out for a 'rich husband'... a husband who will join the rich family, making them even richer... That's how it works often in China.

It is not easy for a foreigner who is not a Chinese, overseas Chinese or cannot speak Chinese at all to meet 'just ordinary' simple Chinese girls from a smaller cities - and forget about rural areas, no women there, many left to the cities, at least to work in a factory to cover their basic needs.

You see yourself in this forum, that members who are mostly interested in China are Asian-Americans of Chinese origin, like zboy1, Winston himself, and there is this young friendly Chinese student in Canada (Bao3 or similar) and some others.

I also share your opinion, that a typical Chinese woman is maybe not the best choice for a Western foreigner without any roots to China.

China has now a new law since a short while regarding property and to prevent scam marriage - the person who bought the house, paid for it completely and registered it BEFORE marriage free of loans will be the sole owner after divorce. At least after divorce you will be in your own home - your property is protected. That's really better than in Western countries.

New Chinese divorce law causes upset in families
On behalf of David W. Trombadore, Attorney at Law posted in Divorce on Friday, September 9, 2011.

On August 13, the Supreme Court of China handed down a new interpretation of the country's 1980 Marriage Law that critics say radically changes the way that women (and some men) will be treated in divorce. The Court ruled that title to a marital home purchased before the marriage should revert to the buyer, regardless of whether the home was bought outright or on mortgage.

This interpretation of China's family law could have a serious impact on marriages throughout China. In most cases, the spouse who will now have no rights to the marital home will be the wife because of massive social pressure for men to buy homes and for women not to. In Chinese society, men are traditionally provide a home for their wives, often purchasing them well in advance of marriage in order to improve their prospects. In the event of divorce, many women will no longer have any right to the divided value of the marital home -- which is especially significant considering the skyrocketing property values currently taking place throughout China.

Upon hearing of the new ruling, many families immediately took steps to put the other spouse's name on the deed. However, friction has formed in some unions when men have balked at doing so. Chinese news outlets have already reported breakdowns in marriages because of the court's ruling.

Commentators in China have accused the Court of taking China a step backwards. Feminists argue that the new ruling does not take into account women's weaker position in society and fails to take into account women's non-monetary contributions to the household such as childbirth, childcare and other domestic activities. Others say the ruling amounts "to the construction of individual, capitalist-style property law in the heart of China's families."

Proponents of the new interpretation of the law say that the ruling actually serves to protect the traditional family. They point out that many families purchase homes or apartments for their sons to assist them in attracting a wife. They believe the ruling will protect the family's investment in the marriage.

Before this ruling, the marital home in China was considered joint property subject to division upon divorce.

In New Jersey, marital property is divided using the rule of "equitable division," which means that is not automatically split 50-50, but is divided equitably in light of the particular circumstances of the divorcing couple.

Chinese Law Could Make Divorced Women Homeless

BEIJING — Millions of Chinese women, and some men, woke on Aug. 13 to discover their spouse had, in effect, become their landlord.

On that day, the Supreme Court’s new interpretation of the 1980 Marriage Law came into force, stipulating that property bought before marriage, either outright or on mortgage, reverted to the buyer on divorce. Previously, the family home had been considered joint property. Experts agree the change would mostly affect women, since men traditionally provide the family home.

The result has been uproar — and, in the cities, a rush to add the wife’s name to title deeds.

Some husbands have agreed to this, but others have balked, and Chinese news outlets have already reported on marriage breakdowns caused by a husband’s refusal to add his wife’s name.

Marriage law experts and feminists are asking: Did China just take a great leap backward?

“Feudal society is back again. How many hundreds of years will it take before women are free again?” ran a typically angry post by a person called Jingmochengzhu on Sina Weibo, China’s biggest microblog, one of 1.4 million on the topic.

“The Supreme Court is under suspicion of overstepping its authority,” Ma Yinan, a Peking University law professor and deputy head of the Marriage and Family Law Institute under the China Law Society, told the newspaper Southern Weekend. Supporters were trying to justify the new rules as strengthening traditional family structures by preserving a family’s financial investment, he said.

“That’s feudalism,” Mr. Ma said. “We smashed that already. Broke it. For them to advocate traditional family structures is a joke!”

The new rules hollow out the very basis of marriage, said Zhao Xiaoli, a law professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“Interpretation Three basically amounts to the construction of individual, capitalist-style property law in the heart of China’s families,” Mr. Zhao said.

A person using the tag Zhang Lei CNY posted on Sina: “Since the new marriage law came out, the equilibrium has been shattered in countless families. This stone has caused more than a thousand waves.”

The government says that in an era of soaring property prices — up about 500 percent since 2000, according to the National Bureau of Statistics — the law must protect a family’s investment. Parents and other relatives often contribute money to buy an apartment for their son, in order to help him attract a wife.

The law does not specify gender, so a woman who bought an apartment would also get it back at divorce. Yet social scientists say far fewer women buy family homes.

The interpretation is intended to address an immediate problem, and not build a perfect, logical system, a senior Supreme Court official, Du Wanhua, told legal experts last year, Southern Weekend reported in a recent article, “The Behind-the-Scenes Struggle of the New Marriage Law.”

But marriage law specialists said court officials ignored their opinions, listening instead to property law specialists.

During the consultation process, Chen Wei of the Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing tried, but failed, to get a provision that would have excluded a family’s shared primary residence from the new rules, Southern Weekend reported.

“How can the home where you live together become just one person’s property?” Li Mingshun, deputy dean of China Women’s University in Beijing, asked in the online publication Women’s Voice.

The new rules ignore a woman’s unpaid contributions to the home, including childbirth, child rearing, housework and caring for elderly family members, Li Ying, deputy director of the Beijing Qianqian Law Firm, said in Women’s Voice.

The new legal interpretation “keeps stressing ‘fairness, fairness,’ but it doesn’t consider a woman’s weaker position,” said Ms. Li. “It doesn’t recognize at all the value of work done at home.”

In her dissertation, “Brides, Billionaires and Buildings: The Gendering of Real Estate in Postsocialist China,” Leta Hong Fincher, a doctoral candidate at Tsinghua University, explores what she says is “a dramatic widening of China’s gender inequality in wealth as a result of skyrocketing real estate prices in recent years.”

Because of deeply held traditional beliefs that men must be the homeowners and heads of the household, women rarely purchase homes. Their parents may even advise against it. With recent “massive” rises in property values, Ms. Fincher said, this was worsening inequality.

The new rules could put women off marriage, she predicted.

Divorce rates, meanwhile, are rising — 2.7 million couples, or 8.5 percent more than in 2009, split last year, government figures showed. That was a key factor behind the change, with more families afraid of losing their investment, experts said.

Yang Lixin, a law professor at Renmin University in Beijing whose views, marriage specialists said, had influenced the government, defended it in Southern Weekend. Marriage laws should not provide exceptions to the civil code, Mr. Yang said.

Under property law, property belongs to the person who bought it, so “of course it belongs to the individual and isn’t shared!” he said.

Yet China’s Marriage Law has long occupied a special place in the nation’s psyche.

The New Marriage Law of 1950 — the first law passed by the Communists after they seized power in 1949 — outlawed arranged marriages and concubines, and enabled women to divorce their husbands. To this day it remains a symbol of the Communists’ commitment to women’s rights, a process that began under the preceding Nationalist government.

For Mr. Yang, this is an outdated approach.

“Making an exception of marriage law is something invented by the Soviet Union, it’s an ideological outcome,” he said. “Lenin didn’t get everything right.”

Others see a long-overdue wake-up call for Chinese women: Don’t expect a man to provide for you.

“Men have always provided the marriage home, so women’s rights have been hurt,” the author and columnist Zhao Geyu wrote in an essay circulating widely online.

“But there’s no point being resentful or complaining. Look instead to how you can change your own attitude,” she advised.

Or as Zhang Lei CNY posted on Sina Weibo: “Women, work hard, earn money and buy your own home. After this, a man is as insubstantial as a cloud.”

Ghost wrote:Attractive women are tragic.