Chinese pioneer online marriage database to deter cheating couples

Chinese officials have put in action their plan of creating an online database of all married couples in order to deter extra marital affairs.

Chinese officials have put in action their plan of creating an online database of all married couples in order to deter extra marital affairs. State media said Beijing and Shanghai will be among the first places to put marriage databases online this year, reports News.com.au.

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Bigamy is illegal in China, and corruption inspectors with the ruling Communist Party have said several officials have been found guilty - including the former head of the National Bureau of Statistics, Qiu Xiaohua. One study of extramarital affairs in China, published in the US in 2005, said 20 per cent of 1,240 married men surveyed in urban China and 3.9 per cent of 1,275 married women said they had had an affair in the past 12 months.

The civil affairs ministry has said 2.47 million couples split in 2009, up almost 9 per cent from the year before. The Shanghai Daily and other state media say the third area to put its marriage database online this year will be the northern province of Shaanxi.