CALLING OFF FOREVER.docVIP

CALLING OFF FOREVER 　　On June 25， former Olympic cham- pion hurdler Liu Xiang announced he and his wife Ge Tian， an actress， were getting a divorce， ending their marriage of only nine months. Liu’s announcement on Sina Weibo， China’s Twitterlike microblogging service， said that he and his ex-wife didn’t adapt well as a couple. 　　Liu， born in 1983， and Ge， 1988， got married last September after a four-month courtship， but since then， they were rarely seen together in public. 　　Today， one out of every four marriages in China ends in divorce. Liu and Ge are characteristic of what is becoming known as the“younger-generation divorced population”： They were both born in a single-child family after 1980 and divorced after a short marriage. 　　In order to rein in the surging population， China tightened birth control in 1980 by allowing most urban couples to have only one child and allowing most rural couples to have two if their firstborn was a girl. In late 2011， couples across the country were given the option of having two children if both of the parents are themselves from one-child families. Restrictions were further eased in December 2014， when the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress， China’s top legislature， decided to allow families to have a second child if one of the parents is an only child. 　　“Most post-80s babies don’t have any siblings to communicate with and are the focus of the attention of all senior family members，” said Sun Yunxiao， Deputy Director of the China Youth and Children Research Center. “This hinders their ability to communicate effectively with their spouses. Marriage is an art of compromise.” 　　 Forget-me-not 　　According to figures released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs （MCA） on June 10， a total of 3.6 million Chinese marriages broke up last year. Among them， the 25-29 age bracket represented 38 percent of the total， up 2.8 percentage points from 2013. 　　“The reason the divorce rate is high among these groups is