680 The China Quarterly,191,September 2007,pp.675-695 declaration of void marriage and for divorce,the former is given prior consideration by the court (Article 7). A third significant area of development concerns forced marriage (xiepo hunyin胁迫婚姻).The revised Marriage Law introduces new provisions(in Article 11)that empower a party coerced into marriage to seek abrogation of the marital relationship within one year either from the date of marriage registration or of securing their freedom.Only the coerced party in a marriage may make such an application,according to the 2001 Interpretation at Article 10,which characterizes such"marriages"as unions in which one party compels the other "to enter into marriage against her or his will by threatening the intimidated party or close relatives of that party with harm to life,health,reputation, property and so on."This is clearly an important step in strengthening women's rights,although the time limit of one year is rather short for a woman thus coerced to adjust to her new situation and to decide on whether to remain in the forced marriage. Perhaps indicative of the relatively widespread nature of forced marriage,the 2003 revised Marriage Registration Regulations allow marriage registration organs as well as courts to handle applications from those pressed into marriage against their will (Article 9).The petitioner submits the appropriate documentation to a registration official who then considers the facts of the case.If there is sufficient evidence of coercion,and problems concerning child maintenance,property and debts are revolved,the registrar rescinds the marriage and declares the marriage certificate invalid (Article 9).It would seem,however,that no procedures are yet in place for dealing with customary unions that have been entered into by force.s Fourthly,the revised Marriage Law attempts to deal with growing problems in the"monogamous"nature of marriage.In particular,there has been the re- appearance in southern China of the phenomenon of taking concubines(bao'er nai).This reflects,inter alia,enhanced wealth in the southern China countryside and the continued popular belief in the importance of maintaining patrilineal descent lines (an importance that continues to be indirectly acknowledged officially in family planning regulations,as shown below).In the debates surrounding the revision in 2001 of the Marriage Law,the All- China's Women's Federation pushed hard to make the taking of concubines into a national moral panic,and in this atmosphere some critics of the practice of concubinage argued that the revised Marriage Law should make it a criminal offence.Such arguments were rejected on the ground that the Marriage Law is essentially civil law,and to criminalize concubinage would be to overextend public interest in private matters.However,the General Principles section of the revised marriage code now provides that"cohabitation of a married person with 18 The detailed rules on the property division dimensions of void and voidable marriages are not considered here,for reasons of space.Suffice it to note that the 2003 Interpretation at Article 1 guarantees cohabiting parties the right to bring suit if disputes arise over division of property and custody of children
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Transforming Family Law 681 any third party shall be prohibited"(Article 3,para.2),and concubinage is also made a ground for divorce.Nevertheless,concubinage does not in itself constitute a crime and the 2003 Interpretation also sets limits on the public response to it:in ordinary cases of cohabitation,the courts may not order the cohabitants to cease living together,and it seems that a man and his concubine in a stable relationship will not be required to terminate their cohabitation unless a complaint is made to the court (Article 1). A fifth notable change is in the procedures for marriage registration.As noted above,the change in name from Regulations on the Administration of Marriage Registration(hunyin dengji guanli tiaoli婚姻登记管理条例)，promulgated in l994,to Marriage Registration Regulations(hunyin dengji tiaoli婚姻登记条例) in 2003 reflected official acceptance of the view that hitherto there has been excessive state interference in married life.The more liberal procedures may also be seen as a response to the declining importance of state-owned enterprises as institutions of social control.The amendments were also a product of a change in official thinking on the "private international law"dimensions of marriage registration,as the 2003 reforms create a unified system in which the parties are not only Chinese citizens but also "compatriots"in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan,and foreign parties,thereby ending the hitherto separate regimes for these categories (Article 5).The revised Regulations introduce two further changes.First,the marrying parties must now themselves demonstrate that they have the capacity to marry-assuring the registrar that they are not already married to others nor close consanguines,and so on.Prior to this change,this responsibility was often assumed by work units.Secondly,the policy increasingly imposed in the 1990s requiring intending spouses to undergo pre-marital medical check ups-expressed in robust terms in Article 9 and 10 of the 1994 Regulations-has been abandoned.In part,this reflects the fact that the examination scheme has not worked well.It also reflects an official recognition that marriage and reproduction are not quite the same thing.Thus, although the 2003 Regulations no longer require pre-marital medical check-ups, the revised Women's Protection Law of 2005 at Article 51 contains a new provision on pregnancy health care systems that suggests that women will still be encouraged to undergo pre-marital medical check-ups,and certainly prior to attempting pregnancy. Finally,the revised Marriage Law also attempts to deal with the somewhat paradoxical situation that while parental interference in marriage has declined in post-Mao China,the obstruction of parental marriage by adult children anxious,for example,about the adverse impact of an intended re-marriage on their inheritance rights-has been on the increase.20 As a result,the revised Marriage Law contains a new provision at Article 30 which forbids children 19 See,for example,Yang Dawen and Long Yifei,Hunyin jiating faxue (Marriage and Family Law) (Beijing.Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe,2006),pp.116-19:the full text of the revised regulations is provided at pp.330-33. 20 See Palmer."Protecting the rights and interests of the elderly
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