Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China.

Decoupling: Gender Injustice in China's Divorce Courts, by Ethan Michelson. Court divorce approval rates have dropped dramatically since the early 2000s, while percentages of first-instance divorce suits either rejected by courts or withdrawn by the parties themselves have surged from under 20 percent in the 1980s to almost 50 percent by 2018. Both Ke Li's I Marriage Unbound i and Ethan Michelson's I Decoupling i examine how China's courts deal with marital disputes and the complex bureaucratic, social, and family pressures that face women seeking to protect their rights. [Extracted from the article]