China will soon use across the country access to its cross-regional marital relationship registration service, following a recent revision of the guidelines governing marriage registration, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said on Saturday.Under the new rules, couples will no longer require to sign up marital relationships in the location of their hukou, which is long-term family registration.
Instead, they will be able to choose a windows registry workplace in the habitual house of either party, getting rid of a considerable logistical barrier.This reform is targeted at dealing with the needs of people who live or work far from their registered home towns, especially younger generations.
Formerly, couples needed to return to their hukou area for marital relationship registration, which produced travel and monetary difficulties.According to the most recent nationwide census, about 493 million Chinese people lived away from their hukou place in 2020, an 88.52 percent boost from a decade earlier.A pilot program for inter-provincial marital relationship registration started in June 2021 and was slowly broadened to 21 provincial-level areas, including Beijing, Shanghai and Inner Mongolia.
By February 2025, roughly 492,000 couples had benefited from the program.The reform was made possible through the digitalization of the marriage registration system.
A nationwide marriage information database has been established, making it possible for civil affairs agencies nationwide to share data seamlessly.To simplify the procedure even more, the Ministry of Civil Affairs plans to enhance digital infrastructure for online appointments and inter-provincial information confirmation, guaranteeing a smoother experience for couples across the country.