"I MAY be the last person in the city who still had to apply to his company for approval to get married," joked Wu Fan on his way to pick up his fiancee before they went to the marriage registration office.

After waiting a whole day, he had finally been able to pick up the necessary papers from his company's personnel office just before work finished for the day on Monday afternoon.

That evening, news said that the State Council issued new marriage regulations scrapping the old requirement about having to obtain company approval to get married.

"I totally agree with the cancellation of the requirement," Wu said happily, although it no longer affected him as he had already received company approval.

After going through the whole process, he concluded that all the former procedures were just a waste of time.

"For several days, I went from one department to another within the company to get signatures and to fill in different forms," Wu said.

First, he had to write out an application for permission to get married and then he had to get the signature of his team leader to show that the whole work team agreed his proposed marriage.

Next, Wu was off to the company's family planning office to fill in a form stating when he and his wife plan to have a child - as there is a guideline for the number of new-born children to employees within the company every year, so employees have to wait for their turn to have children.

Next, he had to go to the personnel office to fill in a form stating he is single and has reached marriageable age. Until all these approvals and documents are satisfactorily obtained and filled in, no-one can obtain a marriage certificate.

"It is ridiculous," Wu said. "Why should the company interfere so much with one's privacy?"

Still, Wu is fortunate compared with the non-locals, whose hukou (the registered permanent residence) is not in Shanghai. The latter have to go all the way back to the appropriate government offices in their hometown to obtain approval.

The problem was not with the complex procedures alone. There were also cases to show that work units were abusing their power.

Judy Yang, 24, a graduate student, was one such example. Last month she applied for marriage approval from her university. The teacher refused to give her the paper saying that Yang had not reached the right age to be married as required by the university - 25 for women, five years more than that stipulated in the Marriage Laws.

Yang had no alternative but to wait a year as, without the approval, she couldn't get a marriage certificate.

"The new regulation came just in time to help me out," she said with a broad smile. "The old way left a loophole for some sectors to trespass on individual's rights."

Private affair

Under the new regulations, people wishing to marry have only to sign on a statement saying that they are single and that they are not closely related.

Under the old practice, it was the company who make the assurance that the applicant met the marriage requirements. Now the individuals themselves have to take the responsibility.

"The main function of the company certificate was to prove that the applicant was single," said Zhao Ming, personnel manager with a local State-owned enterprise. A part of his work was to issue marriage certificates for employees.

"The old system was an outcome of the planned economy when people were very much integrated into their work units and everything was a concern of their bosses - whether it was an extra-marital affair or the education of the workers' children."

The situation in China is different now. The market economy emphasizes that people are part of society instead of one company.

The mushrooming of foreign-invested and local private companies had become a challenge to the old practices. People no longer were attached to one work unit for their whole working life.

The emergence of many different types of companies also led to the introduction of many different kinds of seals and stamps for marriage approvals. It was hard to detect those which were genuine and those which were not.

And the growing social mobility of people meant that a company could no longer be certain about an employee's personal history.

"The meaning behind the current repeal of the old regulations is more than just the cost-saving involved in ending the complex procedures. Even more important is that it promotes the freedom of individuals and protects one's privacy," Zhao said.

Bigamy danger

However mingled with wide support for the new measures are some doubting voices.

Xu Anqi, a marriage professor from Shanghai Social Sciences Academy, believes that the time was not yet ripe to repeal the old procedures.

"The new system allows more chances of bigamy," Xu said.

The new regulations say that to get married, all people need to do now is to produce an ID card and hukou book. However, these documents cannot prove one's marriage status.

The validity period for an ID card is as long as 10 to 15 years. And the hukou will not have information contained in it updated until a census is conducted. The time span between two censuses can be several years.

Most people don't have the social awareness to go voluntarily to government offices to have the information on the two documents updated.

Wang Guangmin, a staff member at the Luwan District Marriage Registration Office, said that out-of-date information on the ID card and hukou was the most frequent problem encountered with couples applying for marriage certificates.

"Many divorced people who come in for a second marriage have not had the information about their marriage status changed. Many of them still have 'married' filled in on the 'marital status' line in the hukou," he said.

And it is highly possible that some married couples still have "single" in their hukou or ID cards.

"The information network is lagging behind," Xu said.

As the Ministry of Civil Affairs told the press, it takes at least three years to have the whole nation's internet of the marital status connected.

"Then why can't we wait a little longer until the system is established," Xu said.

Other experts also share her concern.

Zhang Xianyu, a professor from the East China University of Politics and Law, said that it would be necessary to enhance other existing controls now that workplace interference had been weakened.

"It is not right to depend solely on the marriage registration offices to supervise every person's marital status. To do the work better requires the co-operation of other government sectors such as the Public Security Bureau and grassroots neighbourhood community offices," he said.

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