For love or property, law sheds a light

By Li Hong (People's Daily Online)

07:59, August 23, 2011

It is true that people are becoming more materialized 30 years after Deng Xiaoping's reform and openness set a new trailblazer for China. Though we often pad each other for our successes, it is cynical and annoying if only one topic always dominates our dinner table. 

I was dumb struck the other day on the subway eavesdropping three young women talk in lowered voice: "A man is worth less, if not worthless, now, if he cannot afford a house for his marriage." I felt sad for the women deciding men's value on just one criterion – their money-making ability. 

Not long before, we all heard a woman attending a popular TV match-making program declare that she was more willing to weep in a man's luxury car, than laugh on the back of a bicycler. The revelation has spoken of many women's preference of interests over affection when looking for a partner. 

Our forefathers tell us that a marriage built on the premise of materials – including home and car ownership and piles of bank savings – is shaky, but seldom young women dare to brace for the opposite. Their addiction of men's belongings, capricious to many, remains hard to be swayed. 

Then came the epoch-making new judicial interpretation of China's Marriage Act a week ago by the Supreme People's Court. The legal explanation rules that houses and other major properties – not explicitly put in the name of both partners on legal papers – are solely belongings of the initial owner. 

As China's men are often obligated to buy a home before marriage – mostly with financial assistance from the parents, the interpretation rules the property should continue to be men's once a couple break up. Previously, the law says the properties must be evenly cut and distributed between the two divorced partners. 
Men and their parents are elated at the new explanation, while women are cursing and lambasting it. The latter claim the law seriously hurt women's feelings, by neglecting their contributions to the family – including bearing most of house chore and giving birth to children. 

Opponents of the interpretation decry it as official abandoning of one of Chinese fine cultures -- close family – as the new interpretation is to encourage men to seek extramarital affairs, needless to fear property loss. But the proponents say that by removing home and other economic bandages, marriages would become more based on "true love". 

What is intended as a legal instrument to prevent marriage of selfish interests may sow the seeds of distrust and ignite tensions among family members. 

Whether the new interpretation that demarcates spouses' properties clearly works to conjure up unbridled genuine love, or presages a volatile time of freer breakup of families, is to be seen. 

By protecting the rights of home owners, the new explanation is believed to bring China one substantive step closer to Western legislative values that prioritize private rights over anything else. Some opponents claim that it will move the country faster on the road of becoming a "commercialized" society – like the Western developed economies, which I think could be hard to be averted. 
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