More and more people believe office romances can work, according to a new survey carried in Saturday's China Daily.

In the poll, 51.4 percent of 3,500 white collar workers questioned said that romances in the workplace could lead to marriage. It is an increase of 4 percent on a similar survey conducted by Zhaoping.com last August.

"I believe that more and more youngsters will find their husbands or wives in their offices," Lucy Chen, a public relations staff at a foreign company in Shanghai, was quoted as saying.

She fell in love with one of her colleagues two years ago and got married last month.

"Before we became a couple, both of us were too busy to expand our circle of friends," she said, adding that she believed more office romances would blossom because of people's increasing hours at work.

But office romance is not appreciated by all employers.

Twelve percent of people in the survey claimed that office romance is definitely forbidden in their workplaces and 40 percent said their employers seemed to have no opinions on such relationships.

"In our company, if someone wants to change his or her relationship with a colleague into a romantic one, one of them has to quit the job and leave the company," said Cao Ke, public relations director at a pharmaceutical company in Shanghai.

Gu Jun, chief of the Sociology Department in Shanghai University, said that office romances will become more popular.

"Now in many companies, most employees are young singles. They do not have many opportunities to find their lovers out of the offices because of high pressure from work," said Gu.

He said it is natural that the office becomes a comfortable place for youngsters to find their mates.

"Now the office has become the most important place in many young people's lives," he added.

(China Daily February 19, 2006)