TAIPEI, Taiwan — In her small basement office, business is depressingly brisk for C.C. Shih.
A gritty middle-aged woman with fire in her eyes, Shih has run a nonprofit center for divorced women in central Taipei for more than a decade. But the jump in Taiwanese seeking jobs in mainland China has landed her at ground zero of what is fast becoming a social epidemic.
Together with two branches in other cities, her center's caseload has doubled to 10,000 in the last five years. The increase has been generated mainly by Taiwanese men taking second families on the mainland, then, all too often, abandoning the wives and children left behind. It's gotten so bad that Shih earlier this year set up a separate group within the center to better deal with the issue.
She named it the First Wives' Club.
"We're the only business expanding in Taiwan," she quipped.
Taiwan's second-wife phenomenon is one of the problems linked to the migration of Taiwanese to mainland China, a movement that for some people has caused anguish, emptiness and social upheaval.
"We don't know how to handle this issue," said Wu Rong-I, president of Taiwan's Institute for Economic Research. "The government has no effective instrument to control the flow."
For the likes of Shih, that's an understatement.
Two sparsely furnished rooms at her center handle twice-daily group therapy sessions for women trying to cope with abandonment. A larger classroom is used to educate women on their rights. Shih has also assembled a stable of 10 lawyers who volunteer their time to try to amend Taiwan's family laws.
According to these laws, property in a marriage belongs to the husband, which allows many Taiwanese men to sell the family dwelling out from under the wife and children in order to support a new family on the mainland.
Traditionally, men also have had first claim on custody of children, and only in recent years has wife beating become a crime, Shih said.
"There's a history of serious discrimination here," she said.
With Taiwan's economy in a trough, finding work is hard for single mothers. Even if they do find jobs, child-care costs can be prohibitive.
"Basically, they are trapped," Shih said.
To protect against the danger that children from a second, mainland relationship will stake a claim to the father's wealth, Shih says, she urges Taiwanese women to press their mainland-bound men to undergo vasectomies.
