BEIJING, July 24 -- The Chinese city of Tianjin announced Wednesday a 'sin tax' on unmarried couples living together, but those already sharing apartments said they would rather pay up than split up. Wang Xuefu, director of the municipal marriage management division of the Civil Administration Bureau, said, 'Cohabitating couples will be fined up to 1,000 yuan ($120) if their marriages are not properly registered.' 'We have seen a declining trend of marriage registration,' Wang said in introducing a new local code aimed at wiping out illicit sex between increasing numbers of couples postponing matrimony. The official Xinhua news agency said the northern industrial city was the first to try to curb unmarried sex through a 'sin tax' and also has ushered in new regulations on so-called 'Cupid Clubs' promising to find partners for spouse-hunting singles. Although living together without benefit of matrimony is a new phenomenon in speedily modernizing China and staunchly frowned upon by parents and relatives, couples quietly cohabiting voiced anger over the fine. Zhao Chunyan, a 25-year-old student at a Tianjin university, said, 'Living together is a very personal thing. It is certainly odd that authorities would consider this a matter subject to fines.' 'It's an invasion of privacy and infuriating,' she added. Zhao said other unmarried couples she knows will not pay serious attention to such a regulation, and if it is enforced, would pay up rather than wed under such coercion. Zheng Fei, also living with the woman he eventually plans to marry, said the fine failed to address the expensive realities of getting married in China.
'Couples have to be practical about marriage,' he said. 'Those who often live together decide to because they cannot yet afford the costly wedding ceremony they would like or all the household appliances newlyweds are expected to own.' China's sexual attitudes are quickly reverting to the permissive standards of pre-communist life. The spread of AIDS has spawned unprecedented candor about sex and birth control and surveys reveal 20 percent of students lose their virginity in college. Amid the explosion of sex, matrimony is taking a pounding. 'Marriage is the tomb of love,' has become a popular saying.
