Can cousins get married?

Cousins are close relatives and marriage is not legal. Article 7 of the Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China prohibits the marriage of blood relatives in the direct line and blood relatives in the collateral line within three generations. Cousins are collateral blood relatives within three generations, so it is not legal for cousins to marry.

Continuous blood relatives are those who are directly related to one's own, i.e., one's parents, grandparents, grandparents and higher generations who gave birth to one's own, and one's children, grandchildren, grandchildren and lower generations who gave birth to one's own.

The collateral blood relatives are the blood relatives from the same grandparents, including blood brothers and sisters (including the same mother and father, the same mother and father, and the same father and mother), cousins, uncles and aunts and nieces, uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews. It follows that cousins are collateral blood relatives within three generations and they cannot marry.

Expanded Information

Intermarriage between close relatives is due to the fact that both of them have too many similar hereditary factors for the offspring to produce mutations from them and harmful genes to pass it on to the offspring.

If this gene is inherited in an autosomal recessive manner, their children may develop the disease because they are mutant purebloods. Thus, consanguineous marriages increase the risk of certain autosomal recessive diseases. Inbreeding increases the probability of getting such a pure or identical pair of genes in a child .

Baidu Encyclopedia - The Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China