The Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau recently announced that information about marriages that are registered in Beijing, Shanghai or Shaanxi Province is now shared among the three places. People from these places can now use their spouses' ID number to check their marital status online, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.
This new regulation is part of a pilot project where China's marriage registration information is accessible nationwide regardless of the place where the couple registered. The project was designed by the civil affairs authorities to prevent bigamy.
Moreover, up to 3 million documents containing Beijing marriage registration records that were handwritten before 2005 have been digitized.
