According to the latest survey jointly conducted by the East China Normal University and the municipal civil affairs bureau, international marriages in Shanghai have connected China's commercial hub with all the world's continents except Antarctica.

China has a history of approving transnational marriage, as proved by an old saying depicting the value of wedlock that brings together lovers from 1,000-mile-apart places.

However, it's not uncommon nowadays for husbands and wives coming from countries separated by tens of thousands of miles to meet and marry in Shanghai.

Foreign partners in locally registered mixed marriages involve people from foreign nations, as well as overseas Chinese and those from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

The number of foreigners married to Shanghai natives has risen from 1,476 in 1996 to 1,840 in 2002, while marriages involving overseas Chinese and those from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan dropped from 1,607 to 850 during the period.

Lin Kewu, an official with the local civil affairs bureau, considered the growth and decline of the two types of marriage an indication of a wider selection range for international marriage in Shanghai.

Increasing foreign contact in Shanghai for the past two decades and the enhancement of local residents' knowledge of different cultures was behind the increase, Lin said.

Between the 1980s and 1990s, overseas Chinese or those from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan were preferred in mixed marriages in the city, as both sides were of similar cultural traditions and had no language obstacles.

In the 1990s when Japan became Shanghai's greatest trade partner, Japanese became the largest group of foreigners migrating to the city. International marriages involving Japanese people has accounted for 40 percent of the city's total in the last seven years.

An increasing number of Shanghai natives began tying the knot with foreigners from Europe and America, accounting for a quarter of the city's overall international marriages in 2002.

Despite the long distance, European and American countries have invested more in Shanghai and increasingly dispatch their employees to work here in recent years, said Yang Hongyan, an expert on marriage in the city.

Therefore, European and American people are playing a greater role in international marriages due to greater opportunities for cross-cultural communication, Yang said.

In western sociology, marriages between two races are the primary criterion measuring their "social distance". Accordingly, Shanghai's international marriages are actually pushing China closer to the world, said Cao Yunhua, a Chinese sociologist.

(Xinhua News Agency June 19, 2003)