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New Rules, Passionate Debate
"My husband has lived with that woman for years and they even have a child. Why cannot you just go there and arrest him?"
Policeman Zhang Jianlin was tongue-tied at the question, when the woman cried and yelled in his office at the Tangxi Police Substation of Baiyun District, Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province.
In spite of his personal sympathy, he knew that his decision not to arrest the errant husband was legally right because the woman was unable to provide any evidence. And "the third party" herself and her neighbours refused to admit the existence of the cohabitation.
Furthermore, being a policeman, he was not allowed to go out gathering evidence for civil cases.
Zhang's dilemma is a good example of what many see as an embarrassing situation - China's Marriage Law, in recent years, has been vigorously challenged by the increasing number of cases involving bigamy, illegal cohabitation and extramarital affairs.
Calls for a solution from the law enforcers and the victims became so loud that late last year legislators decided the Marriage Law should be amended this year.
In May, before any national rule was actually launched, the Guangdong Province implemented some pioneering regulations relating to the wrongdoers in marriage.
"Like a gunshot fired in the tranquil forest, the issue gives rise to a hubbub of voices," said Du Meixian, chairperson of Guangzhou Women's Federation.
In the wake of China's opening-up and its economic reforms, the Chinese have both soaring personal incomes and the realization that they do not have to live like before.
In some prosperous provinces such as Guangdong, the phenomenon of bao ernai, or having a concubine, is clearly on the rise as some businessmen out of Chinese mainland - mostly from Hong Kong, and even officials keep mistresses.
Statistics from the Guangdong Women's Federation show complaints about this from wives hit 219 in 1996, rising to 235 the following year and 348 in 1998.
"The lack of effective and timely punishment is partly to blame for the spread," said Huang Shumei, director of the Rights and Interests Department of Guangdong Provincial Women's Federation.
But it was reported in one village in Guangzhou that some men are now losing out because of their extramarital affairs.
Sanyuanli, one of the area's most wealthy villages, was getting fed up with angry wives and the growing number of mistresses.
So earlier this year it began to transfer the farmers' ownership of the nearly 100,000-yuan (US$12,000) annual bonus, as well as the houses the village gives them, to their wives when they divorce because of a third party's involvement.
Along with Guangdong's new regulations are the Suggestions on How to Deal with Illegal and Criminal Behaviour and Property Issues in Matrimonial Relations.
The first of these kind of provincial regulations in China, they aim to protect the rights of the victims, mainly women, from bigamy or extramarital affairs.
Major breakthroughs have been made by giving the police the right to search for evidence in bigamy cases, and by stressing the need to protect the legal rights and interests of the innocent party in the marriage.
The rules' most practical and welcomed section is on the definition of a couple's joint property, which expands to any property the wrongdoer has bought for "the third party."
In other words, when a couple applies for a divorce because of an affair, the innocent wife can now own half of the property the husband bought for his mistress.
"Although it was not drafted and passed by the legislators, it has legal power because it was proposed on the basis of China's Criminal Law, the Criminal Procedural Law, the Marriage Law, the Protection Law of Women's Rights and Interests, and other regulations," said a spokesman from the Guangdong Higher People's Court.
Responses to the new rule were so explosive that in the past 50 days, women's federations around the province have been busy answering thousands of enquiries from the victims, the marriage betrayers, the mistresses and wives from places including Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.
Nonetheless, some critics said there are some problems with the new rule.
"It is unworthy to spend all the limited police time on such civil cases while there are serious murders, robberies and drug cases waiting to be investigated," said an official from Guangdong Judicial Bureau.
Chen Cheng, a lawyer from the Guangdong Global Lawyer's Office, said without revising the Marriage Law's stance on bigamy, it remains difficult to find the wrongdoers' guilty.
Guangdong's attempts to close up the legal loopholes have ignited greater social concerns on the coming amendment of the Marriage Law which will still advocate free marriage, monogamy and gender equality.
"But such evils (as bigamy and having mistresses) not only go against socialist ethics, but also corrupt social values and cause family break-ups, murders and suicides because of love affairs, threatening social stability and family planning," said Hu Kangsheng, deputy director of the Legislative Affairs Commission under the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee.
At a workshop on the amendment research in Beijing earlier this month, he said legislators are still debating the whole issue, and research is still underway among officials and experts from women's federations, civil affairs departments and courts.
Being the first law the New China issued half a century ago, the Marriage Law has remained unchanged in the past two decades.
Hu said the Law was needed to "clearly define civil torts and rights and come up with remedies." Currently, experts are stuck on how to define the criteria for bigamy, and whether to introduce a system of compensation in divorce cases.
Some have suggested that verdicts of guilty of bigamy should also be reached when the suspected wrongdoer has cohabited with "the third party" for at least six months and has had children with "the third party," or when the suspected wrongdoer has cohabited with "the third party" in a fixed residence for over six months.
"That would be a lethal weapon to the wrongdoers if it became the final definition," said Huang Shumei, the official of Guangdong Provincial Women's Federation.
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