In Beijing the divorce rate leapt to 24.4 percent in 1994, more than double the 13 percent rate just 10.4 years ago.
Chinese officials say it is rising all over China, faster in cities than in the countryside.
Yet for women in Beijing, the growing divorce rate is a reflection of a new social and economic freedom of the rising expectations that women bring to marriage. The damaging effects of a remarkable increase in adulterous affairs, resulting in more than 70 percent of divorces initiated by women, with the most common reason given is that a husband has had an affair. Extra-marital affairs have become one of the major causes of divorce in China today. Government officials, who once actively opposed divorce, now are more tolerant toward the idea. But the governments' shift in attitude is only one ingredient in the rising divorce rate.