A deputy of the National People's Congress from southwest China has submitted a proposal at the annual meeting of top legislators in Beijing, calling for relevant laws on marriage registration to be amended to make obtaining divorces tougher.

Hei Xinwen, who is also a department head at XJ Technology Corp., said the current simplified procedures for obtaining divorces in China were one of the reasons for the country's high divorce rate, the "Chongqing Evening News" reports.

The proposal says couples should produce a divorce conciliation statement certified by their companies, communities or village committee, and that divorces should only be allowed when the relevant authorities have confirmed the failure of an attempted conciliation.

About 1.7 million couples registered for divorces in civil affairs bureaus across the country last year. The number did not include the cases settled in court, which marked an increase of 10.3 percent over the year before, Hei said.

"Nowadays, a growing number of young people get divorced impulsively," Hei was quoted as saying. Hei added that people who get divorced were most likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, alcoholism and insomnia, and even develop mental problems. Divorce not only affected the couples themselves, but also the psychological health of their children, she said. Hei noted that a research report indicated that two-thirds of 102 young people in the United States who had committed suicide had divorced parents.

Hei said many factors have caused a rapid increase in the number of divorce cases in China, but that social transitions were the main factor causing cracks in marriage stability. As their material lives improved, many Chinese also increased their expectations about marriage quality, she said.

Hei argued that a simplified procedure for divorce also had made "impulsive couples" obtain divorces more easily. It was because of the simplified procedures that some couples were inclined to resort to divorce over trivial family matters, she added.

Hei said divorce was also a big issue in western countries. In Germany, for instance, legislators have been trying to make divorce more difficult by requiring that a man give half of his income to his wife once he files for a divorce. The United States also has a high divorce rate, but the procedures for obtaining one are long with the process usually requiring a minimum of six months.