What’s stopping the Chinese from saying ‘I do’ to a prenup?
China’s divorce rate is growing – as are post-marital disputes over money and property. A few are turning to prenuptial agreements, but most see them as a turn-off
He was an entrepreneur who worked in high-paid programming roles for Chinese tech firms before starting his own. She was a young, smart and beautiful graduate of a top Chinese university, described by classmates as a “dream girlfriend”. Su Xiangmao and Zhai Xinxin met on a dating website and tied the knot after a whirlwind romance. Tragically, their ever-so-modern love story ended almost as abruptly as it had began. Just one month after they married, she asked for a divorce and he jumped from his Beijing flat to his death.
In a suicide note, which he posted online last month, Su accused his ex-wife of driving him to despair. The 37-year-old founder of China’s Skype-like WePhone app said he had killed himself because Zhai demanded US$1.5 million and a flat as a “break-up fee”, saying she had threatened to report him to police for tax evasion if he did not pay up.
The investigation into Su’s death is ongoing and the full details of the reason behind their split may never be known, but that hasn’t stopped many social commentators from jumping on the case, saying it illustrates an all-too-common malady in modern-day China: marriages conceived on the value of each partner’s assets, rather than their love for each other.
On any given day in 2016, more than 11,000 Chinese couples ended their marriage, according to China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs. This trend is expected to continue, with 1.9 million couples getting divorced in the first half of this year alone – a rise of 10.3 per cent from the same period a year earlier.
Despite the rising odds of marriage failure, few Chinese couples are willing to embrace the idea of signing prenuptial agreements, or prenups.