As seen on Sinocism: Yesterday, Sina News reported that the PSB will crack down on dual citizenships, namely “people who obtain citizenship in another country but try to keep their Chinese citizenship and hukou.” However, this move is also likely to affect mixed-nationality families.

Though China doesn’t technically allow dual citizenships, the law hasn’t always been enforced. In 2010, I was shocked to learn during my student visa application that I still had a hukou in Chongqing – even though I’d grown up in Canada and was a Canadian citizen. I ended up having to travel to Chongqing to renounce my hukou in person.

Until now, the Chinese-born children of mixed families – where one parent holds a foreign passport and the other holds a Chinese passport – existed in a legal gray area. My colleague Jerry Chan, a longtime Beijinger and dad of two bi-national children, has written extensively about his family’s bureaucratic hassles on beijingkids. Click here and here for some background.

In the past, children with both a hukou and a foreign passport were issued a single entry and exit permit (旅行证, lvxing zhen) for travel. However, if China turns its attention to mixed families in this latest crackdown, these permits would likely be abolished, effectively forcing many parents to renounce their children’s Chinese citizenship.

Though there have been no official announcements specifically regarding mixed-nationality families, one family we know has reported recently being “reminded” by the PSB to deal with their child’s de facto dual citizenship sooner rather than later.

This is a developing story; check back for updates.

Photo: Tim Sackton (via Flickr)

Back in 2008, when my wife and I had our first-born, I blogged about the issue of my daughter’s nationality. As dual-nationality parents (my wife is Chinese with a Beijing hukou and I’m American), we were unsure as to what this meant for our newborn’s citizenship status.

To make a long story short: according to US and PRC law our daughter qualifies for citizenship for both countries (or more precisely, in the case of China, she is "automatically considered a citizen" since her mother is Chinese and she was born in China), so we went ahead and got my daughter her American passport and a shenfenzheng (身份证), a hukou (户口) and a Chinese passport to boot.

But when the occasion arose for our first trip with her back to the US, we were obliged to inquire with the PSB (a.k.a. the Chu Ru Jing 出入境 near Xiaojie Qiao near Andingmen) as to what documents she would use to exit and re-enter China. 

After some back and forth, we were issued a special passbook for exit and entry and told by a PSB officer that we could essentially wait for our daughter to turn 18 and let her choose her citizenship for herself. In the meantime we would have to apply for the special Exit and Entry permit each time we decided to take our daughter out of the country.

Although a bit of a hassle, we accepted this seemingly sensible arrangement and proceeded to travel several times with our daughter out of the country following this procedure. I must point out that this advice did not seem to be based on some sort of official policy – more of a "nudge-nudge-wink-wink" off-the-record piece of advice from a rather nice officer we consulted with.

Interestingly, other families we compared notes with (where one parent was from outside of Beijing) reported entirely different experiences from us. Most were refused any kind of help in Beijing and told that they would have to resolve the issue in the hometown of the Chinese parent. The result was usually a bureaucratic runaround in which the parents were obliged to renounce their child’s Chinese citizenship and then apply for a residence permit.

We presumed this exception was possible for us because my wife has the ever-important Beijing hukou – it seemed that whatever policy existed at that time was ambiguous at best, if not inconsistently applied in favor of Beijing hukou holders.

Recently we have discovered with our second child (born in 2012) that Beijing-hukou-holding parent or not, the policy has become simultaneously more stringent and even more ambiguous for families like ours.

The Global Times has an article describing this very conundrum for mixed nationality parents in Beijing:

Foreign-Chinese couples taking the plunge into parenthood in China often face trouble if they want to renounce their child’s Chinese citizenship in favor of adopting a foreign nationality. The process is particularly confusing because advice often differs between staff from hospitals, the police and foreign embassies in Beijing.

As with many families faced with this situation, there seems little choice for us but to renounce our son’s Chinese nationality. Unfortunately this is where things get painfully complicated:

Renunciation requires a child to have a hukou (household registration) from their Chinese parent’s hometown. This then needs to be taken to a public security bureau (PSB) branch in the Chinese parent’s hometown with other documents, including parents’ passports or ID card, marriage certificate if held and a signed declaration renouncing their child’s Chinese citizenship.

The GT article goes on to describe what an incredible hassle this has proven to be for families where one parent comes from outside of Beijing, but this doesn’t mean it’s a cakewalk for Beijing-hukou-holding parents either. A Beijinger friend of my wife’s who is currently faced with the same situation tells us this process could take up to a year of red tape and hoop-jumping and she speculates that there is currently some in-fighting going on between the PSB and the Foreign Ministry (外交部) in these regards – as is often the case, these bureaus are having what appears to be a turf war of authority and influence and the pawns (and losers) appear to be the families.

For our family there is an additional rub: Since my son is our second child, he doesn’t even qualify for a hukou (or shenfenzheng) because of China’s increasingly archaic one-child policy – this means that in essence he is not recognized by China as a citizen even though authorities insist he is by birth.

We decided to have our second child in the first place under the mistaken presumption that he would simply be an American citizen and we simply wouldn’t bother with any hukou registration (much less any citizenship renunciation)*, but now it seems the burden is on us to lift him out of this legal limbo. 

With no clear indication of any reform of this policy in sight, I am currently bracing for a barrage of bureaucratic BS in the coming months as I prepare to take my son and daughter for a visit to the US some time in 2013. With no hukou or shenfenzheng to show for my son, I have no idea what red tape horrors we will face when we instigate this process. One thing is certain, I can only assume the worst and am definitely dreading it, but visit our Stateside family we must.

This is not to say there were no bureaucratic hoops to jump through on the American side – I was obliged to produce documentation and a sworn affidavit to secure my son’s US citizenship – but at least the process was straightforward and timely. I only wish I could anticipate the same for straightening out things on the Chinese side.

More on this issue to come. If you have any insights or advice to share, please comment below and here.

*My company even called the PSB shortly after our son’s birth inquiring about getting him a visa under my own Z visa only to be curtly told by the operator that since his mother is Chinese, he is "automatically a Chinese citizen" (whether you choose it or not).

A few months back I wrote a post about how our family was dealing with the ambiguous nationality status of our daughter, whose father is American and mother is Chinese.

ChengduLiving has also posted a similar article about one particular American father’s dilemma over how to deal with the nationality of his child, born under similar circumstances.

In essence: “I don’t really think a Chinese passport will be more desirable than a US passport anytime soon, no matter what happens. But I have to admit, what matters to me most are not the risks or benefits, but the fact that my son has the right to Chinese citizenship. Just because the government refuses to recognize a globalized world and a globalizing China, my son has to choose between two parts that make up his whole? I think not. What do you think? Should I get dual citizenship? Is it worth it? Is there a risk I am not aware of?”

As with many things concerning one’s kids, there are no easy answers, but parents in the same situation might find the comments section enlightening. Feel free to weigh in on this topic in our forums as well.

With so many foreigners and Chinese getting married and having children in China, understanding the rules and reality of their children’s citizenship can be incredibly confusing.

China officially does not allow dual citizenships. This seemingly straightforward policy applies relatively neatly to native-born Chinese citizens. Chinatravelguide.com cites Article 9 of the China Nationality Law, which states “as soon as a Chinese takes a foreign citizenship, he will automatically lose his Chinese citizenship.”

However, things get confusing when you consider this law: “China considers a child born within its borders to hold Chinese citizenship if one parent is a Chinese national, even if the child applies for and receives a U.S. [or other foreign]passport while in China.”

So what, exactly, applies for kids born to a Chinese parent in China? Does this mean that children whose foreign parent registers their birth abroad at their local embassy and receives a foreign passport automatically forefeit their Chinese citizenship (and hukou, if they applied for one)?

Not exactly. The best explanation I found for this seeming contradiction is in this Wikipedia post:

“Some countries consider multiple citizenship undesirable and take measures to prevent it; this may take the form of an automatic loss of a citizenship if another citizenship is acquired voluntarily (e.g., in China, Denmark, Japan, Singapore and India) or criminal penalties for exercising another citizenship (e.g., for carrying a foreign passport in Saudi Arabia). Others may allow a citizen to have any number of nationalities. However, since each country decides for itself who its citizens are, based solely on its own laws and generally without regard for the laws of other countries, it is quite possible for a given individual to be considered a citizen by two or more countries even if some or all of these countries forbid dual or multiple citizenship.”

This situation applies to an increasing number of mixed-nationality families in Beijing (including mine), regardless of whether or not the country of origin (i.e. the United States, the UK, France, Canada and Australia) of the non-Chinese parent allows dual citizenships.

While this legal limbo has no real effect on day-to-day life here in China, things can get hairy when you want to take your de facto dual citizen child abroad (especially back to mom or dad’s country of origin).

We found this out firsthand when we recently took our Beijing-born daughter to the US, where I’m from. Wanting to play it safe (and for some very practical reasons), we applied for and received her Beijing hukou and US passport and birth certificate at the same time. But as we began planning to take her to the US earlier this year, the question of how, exactly, we were going to get her there became a burning issue.

Our main concern was the possibility of our daughter losing her Chinese citizenship and Beijing hukou if we were to leave (and reenter) China using her American passport, so we (rather naively) tried applying for a US visa in her Chinese passport. It didn’t work. The embassy took one look at our family situation and flatly refused the visa citing a law against American citizens entering the country on a foreign passport.

That left only Plan B, which (on the advice of the embassy) consisted of taking our daughter’s American passport to the PSB exit and entry administration bureau and seeing what could be done. I schlepped over there on a bitterly cold morning with the required documentation and materials, utterly convinced that a cancellation of my daughter’s hukou was imminent. To my surprise, it wasn’t.

Instead, we were given a travel document (lu xing zhen) – a blue booklet resembling a passport that serves as an exit and reentry visa good for one trip only – and what essentially amounted to a “nudge nudge, wink wink” admonishment from the PSB. A couple of junior officers gave me some lip about how “China does not allow dual citizenships yada yada yada,” but no one said a word about canceling my daughter’s Chinese citizenship now that she was “on the record” as having both a US passport and Beijing hukou. The closest we got was an apathetic shrug when I upped and asked if this was to be the case, and was merely told that the next time we wanted to travel overseas with our daughter, we’d have to go through the same process again (which is totally fine by me).

So there you have it – we made it the States and back without incident and thus I offer this post as the closest thing to an explication of the dual citizenship conditions for kids in my daughter’s situation.

I suppose at one point she may be obliged to choose, or better yet she can continue enjoying this de facto dual citizenship for the rest of her life (much like the hundreds of thousand “foreign passport holding Hong Kong citizens” who found themselves deemed in this new status after 1997). Perhaps the law may someday even change in response to popular necessity and China’s rising international status. One thing, however, is for sure – if your kid has a Chinese parent (especially one from Beijing), you might as well get her a hukou.