Young Chinese Flirt with Sex Before Marriage
 

(submitted by gekkogecko)


Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - Young Chinese are becoming more
relaxed about infidelity, pre-marital sex and divorce,
"acts that have been frowned on for thousands of
years," Xinhua news agency said Monday.

A third of the more than 1,000 people aged 23 to 26
polled in eight major Chinese cities said they
accepted sexual practices that were taboo in China
until recent decades.

"The survey found that 33 percent of the respondents
said they could tolerate extra-marital affairs, and
34.8 percent said pre-marital sex was good for marital
life," Xinhua said.

Attitudes about sex have relaxed since Communist China
began Western-style market reforms in 1978, unleashing
a boom in dating and adultery which the Communist
Party has blamed on liberal, bourgeois mores imported
from the West.

One third of respondents said marriage did not have to
last a lifetime, symbolic of the rapid rise of divorce
in China.

More than 1.6 million couples across China divorced in
2004, Xinhua said based on government statistics.
China is the world's most populous country with 1.3
billion people.

It is not a trend encouraged by authorities and older
generations.

"Sociologists have urged civil affairs departments to
launch campaigns to educate young people to take a
serious attitude toward marriage," Xinhua said.

Too much concern over face, virginity and pureness. That state of mind needs to be lost :P

Here, I thought it was hormones or something.