Polygyny

What is polygyny? Polygyny is a system of marriage allowing a man to marry more than one woman.  

The legality of this polygyny system is apply by some countries, and mostly are only legal for specific religion which is Muslim that allow man to marry up to four women.  

Nowadays, monogamy is currently recognized in China. However, the polygyny use to genera in China before 1950. 

This polygyny practice in China from the oldest dynasty China which is dynasty Xia.  During the ancient period, a man was allowed to marry with more than one woman, or we can say it does not matter how many women a man wants to marry.  It only depends on the income and the willingness of the man. 

The richest man, emperors, the emperor in every dynasty had a huge harem.  For example, in dynasty Tang, the palace system states that the imperial harem needs to have at least 120 women with different status.  

In this 21 century, most of Chinese are monogamists and they can’t accept the polygamy either is polygyny or polytandry because they think that is unequal.

But why, polygyny was advocate by the public during the old period?  

In old China, a big part of Chinese ware very emphasis on the continuity of a clan.  There needed a lot of male offspring, then they will have more choice to choose the best one to become the head of the clan. 

In the case of emperors, they need to choose one of the sons to become the next emperor.  Therefore, the emperor needs to have a lot of male offspring for him to select, because the choice will affect the whole nation.

The second reason was the low status of women, at that period, even women think that women are tools to produce posterity, and this was their only job and responsibility.

In 1912, the Republic of China announced the “Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China'' and it was the starter of monogamy in China.  It clearly stated that monogamy should be implemented, but polygny still exists.  Until 1950, with the announce of  “Marriage Law of the People’s Republic”, the polygyny completely abolished.