A hole in new marriage regulations that left single people without the ability to prove their status may soon be plugged.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs announced Wednesday it has started writing an amendment to end an unexpected side effect of the new marriage regulations that took effect last October.

While a marriage certificate can prove one's marital status, at the moment a person's single status cannot be proven because the new marriage registration regulation fails to clarify who is authorized to prove that a person is in fact not married.

While it is uncommon in Western countries to provide documentation showing that a person is single, there are a number of different situations for Chinese citizens that require paperwork showing that a person is not currently married. In most cases, Westerners in their home country are presumed to be single unless they produce a marriage license proving otherwise.

The amendment announced Wednesday guarantees that the ministry will provide testimony to prove whether a person is married or not. Thanks to the new marriage registration regulation, getting married has become a much simpler affair in China.

Only identification cards and hukou, or residence registration booklets, are needed for both marriage and divorce, according to the new regulation.

Before, couples were required to present stamped documents from their employers, or from their neighborhood committee if they were without a regular job, to prove their unmarried status.

However, since no institute recognizes people's unmarried status, some people have been faced with problems when asked to prove their single status as they handle certain procedures such as trading in real estate, bank loan applications and marriages to foreign parties.

A source named Chen, a native of Qingtian County in east China's Zhejiang Province in his late 20s, failed to get an official unmarried status certificate when he was preparing to marry his Italian girlfriend.

Local notarial offices have stopped conducting unmarried status notarization since the new marriage registration regulation became effective.

The ministry's amendment is an expedient measure that may be replaced by other more proper regulations in the future, ministry officials said.

Since a giant database to keep track of marriage records across the country has not yet built, civil affairs departments can only provide testimony of a person's unmarried status within certain administrative areas.

A comprehensive database network involving civil affairs and public security departments should be put together to provide update information on residents, including marriage status, officials said.

The public has welcomed the shift in marriage registration policies.

The cancellation of premarital physical checkups and the simplified registration procedure led to a marriage registration boom in October of last year.

Beijing's Haidian District witnessed a record number of 1,171 marriages during the National Day holiday week, which ran from October 1 - 7.

(China Daily March 4, 2004)