The Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau announced on Wednesday that the foreign marriage registration authority will be decentralized to districts and county level marriage registration offices from Sept 25, Beijing Times reported on Thursday.

Marriage registration information will also be shared online between the city's marriage registration offices and courts from next month, in order to better prevent bigamy.

Foreign marriages are considered those in which residents of the Chinese mainland marry citizens of foreign countries, overseas Chinese and residents of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

According to Wu Bei, director of the marriage registry of the municipal civil affairs bureau, the bureau will no longer handle marriage registration, but only be responsible for foreign adoptions.

Statistics show that foreign marriage registrations were handled by the municipal civil affairs bureau from July 1, 1982, and more than 29,000 couples registered their marriages with the bureau.