China is collecting and unifying its marriage registration information, vowing to put it online for public supervision, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA).

"Making marriage information available to the public can effectively prevent repeated registration and bigamy," said Pan Jisheng, the head of the MCA archives.

The MCA last week issued a regulation on the handling of marriage registration records, to unify the formerly separate records kept by local departments.

The new rule dictates that the recording term for marriage registration will be a hundred years and after expiration, the managing personnel will evaluate those records to decide whether to go on keeping them.

(Xinhua News Agency February 7, 2006)