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Is any Chinese allowed to marry a foreigner?

  • Time:2018-01-05
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Is any Chinese allowed to marry a foreigner?
In the year of 1983, Ministry of Civil Affairs of China issued a regulation which is called Several Rules on Marriage Registration for Marriage between Chinese Citizen and Foreigners. According to this regulation, certain Chinese people cannot marry foreigners; those people include people serving in military, police officers, diplomatists, governmental officers who may possess state secret and even people serving sentences under criminal punishment. No such people may marry a foreigner unless his/her status is changed.
However, the regulation of Several Rules on Marriage Registration for Marriage between Chinese Citizen and Foreigners was nullified in the year of 2008 by the State Council and with the reason specified as “replaced by the new regulation of Marriage Registration Statute”. In fact, the Marriage Registration Statute does not mention anything around forbidding certain Chinese citizens to marry foreigners. The Marriage Registration Statute just specified the procedure of marriage registration, including the marriage registration procedure and divorce procedure with foreigners, therefore, it’s generally accepted that there is no such restriction on Chinese marrying foreigners anymore in practice nowadays.
The only conditions left are the same as normal ones, such as the following conditions:
1.The male must reach 22 and the female must reach 20;
2.Neither the female nor the male is married to a third person (China is following the “one husband one wife” rule).
3.The marriage must be out of the couple’s voluntary willingness;
4.There is no close blood relationship (lineal relatives by blood and collateral relatives by blood within 3 generations) between the couple;
5.There is no disease, unsuitable for marriage;
It is worth to know that a verdict awarded by a court ruling the divorce does not take  effect unless the 30-day  appeal period (for domestic cases, the  appeal period is 15 days) is expired, one must wait until the  appeal period is expired before he or she can marry another person, otherwise, he or she may even be prosecuted for bigamy.
Diseases unsuitable for marriage are usually three types of diseases: highly genetic diseases (such as primary epilepsy), certain infectious diseases (such as AIDS) and certain mental diseases (such as schizophrenia).

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