BEIJING (Reuters) - Young Chinese are becoming more relaxed about infidelity, pre-marital sex and divorce, "acts that have been frowned on for thousands of years," Xinhua news agency said Monday. A third of the more than 1,000 people aged 23 to 26 polled in eight major Chinese cities said they accepted sexual practices that were taboo in China until recent decades.

"The survey found that 33 percent of the respondents said they could tolerate extra-marital affairs, and 34.8 percent said pre-marital sex was good for marital life," Xinhua said. Attitudes about sex have relaxed since Communist China began Western-style market reforms in 1978, unleashing a boom in dating and adultery which the Communist Party has blamed on liberal, bourgeois mores imported from the West. One third of respondents said marriage did not have to last a lifetime, symbolic of the rapid rise of divorce in China. More than 1.6 million couples across China divorced in 2004, Xinhua said based on government statistics. China is the world's most populous country with 1.3 billion people. It is not a trend encouraged by authorities and older generations. "Sociologists have urged civil affairs departments to launch campaigns to educate young people to take a serious attitude toward marriage," Xinhua said.