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)

We popped into the admissions office of Fangcaodi International School during their International Day Fair this past Sunday and learned a very important bit of information from our friends, whose daughter had just been in an enrollment interview with the school that morning.

As they were picking up their daughter they witnessed a heated argument between a mother and administrators because the former was told that her child did not qualify for enrollment in the school’s international division because her daughter did not have a Chinese visa in  her foreign passport.

This requirement has been enforced by local schools for some time now, but was news to us. Essentially it means that Beijing families with de facto "dual citizen" children – i.e. a child born to a Chinese/foreign couple holding both a foreign passport and a local hukou – must renounce their child’s Chinese citizenship in order for their children to be enrolled in any local school’s international division.

China does not officially recognize dual nationality and assumes automatic citizenship for children born to a Chinese parent in China, which can be extremely confusing for dual nationality families here in Beijing and even more so for parents from countries that have similar "birthright" laws.

For instance one local Polish father who is married to a Beijing woman told me that his country mandates that any child born to a parent from his country is automatically a citizen and only the child has the legal right to renounce his or her Polish citizenship.

Thus if he were to choose to send his child to a local Chinese school with an international section (or an international school, for that matter) he would effectively have no choice but to go through the bureaucratic hassle of renouncing his child’s Chinese citizenship to secure admission.

As I described in this earlier post my family is in the same situation – our oldest daughter has a US passport and a Beijing hukou, both by birthright. When we took our first trip back to the US a few years we presumed that we’d be obliged to renounce her Chinese citizenship, but were told by an agent at the PSB that she could effectively keep both and choose for herself when she turned 18. We were issued a one-time exit-and-entry passbook (or tongxingzheng, 通行证), which was good for one exit from and re-entry back into China.

This seemed like a pretty sensible approach and we’ve been able to travel this way with our daughter out of China numerous times since then, but with her enrollment in primary school impending we don’t anticipate being able to do this in the future – it seems likely that we will be obliged to renounce her Chinese citizenship in order to qualify for the international division of our desired school, Fangcaodi.

New reforms to Beijing’s visa regulations for foreigners are coming in June and you can fully expect even more stringent enforcement of all such regulations – if your family is in the same situation you should be prepared to face the same decision when it comes to enrolling your child in an international school or program at a local Chinese school. The gray areas and loopholes of years’ past are closing fast.

And so we will now begin diving into the red tape of renouncing our daughter’s Chinese citizenship (and this still leaves the matter of sorting out a Chinese visa for our 1-year-old son) – I will keep you posted on how things proceed.

We’ve gotten a few interesting responses in the comments section of my recent blog post about the bureaucratic mess that many dual-nationality, foreign/Chinese families are facing when it comes to ensuring that their children have the proper visa/residency status in China. Since then we also received a letter from another reader who is facing a similar situation and was kind enough to allow us to share – I’ve posted his letter and my response below (Disclaimer: I am most definitely not a legal expert and the viewpoints and suggestions I present are not necessarily consistent with actual policy so take them all with a grain of salt).

My company is talking about moving me back to the USA – perhaps as early as March.  My wife’s hukou is in a [city down south]  but outside of the city by several hours. Our two month old son holds a USA passport now because we thought that was easiest and best but he is not on my wifes Hukou.  His birth certificate was also issued in English as the hospital told us that was the correct thing to do if we want him to hold the USA passport.  We first started trying to get him a Chinese Visa so he could stay here but that was denied because we were told to renounce his Chinese citizenship first.  To do that we were told we needed to return to the location of my wife’s hukou and present all the paperwork and it might take about 9 months to complete.  At that time he would qualify for a visa based on my work visa.  We never started this process.

What I’m thinking now might be best is to get the one time exit/entry passbook so we can just get him to the USA.  I’m told this needs to be done in my wife’s hometown though, but just the same, at least we can get him out of the country with us.  While in the USA, we could then apply for him to receive a Chinese visa from the Chinese embassy in the USA before he returns next time.

Does this logic seem to hold up to your experiences and what you know?

And my response:
 

Sorry to hear about your troubles – I can of course relate – the visa issue is a real mess right now.

Unfortunately I don’t have any first-hand experience with what you’re facing since my wife has a Beijing hukou.

What I can say is that it does indeed seem that the process is more complicated for bi-national families where one spouse is from outside of Beijing vs families of Beijing hukou holders. Each municipality seems to have its own take on the rules and how (strictly) they are applied – chalk it up to "bureaucracy with Chinese characteristics." I hope that increasing media attention will improve this situation but for now I’m afraid this is what we all have to deal with.

Every family with a waidi spouse I’ve ever spoken with has reported similar experiences (i.e. having to go to the spouse’s hometown to get paperwork processed) so in these regards your situation is consistent with what I’ve seen. This is a big problem of China’s problematic hukou system and until some fundamental hukou reforms are enacted, I’m afraid I know of no way to get around this (e.g. having to go to your wife’s hometown).

Aside from the hassle of going back to your wife’s hometown, it does seem like the passbook route is the most expedient and relatively hassle-free of your options – If I were in your situation, it would be the one I’d go for. I imagine that once in the US you can get your son a family visa quite easily, but bear in mind that I’m not a legal expert in these matters so best to inquire directly with the Chinese embassy or consulate in the US about this.

You might also ask the PSB while you’re down there if they could simply issue your son a family visa there (do go prepared with all the proper documentation – i.e. birth certificate, marriage certificates, hukou, shenfenzheng, passport etc.), but again, I don’t know how they operate and they could very easily turn you down, but it’s probably worth a try. I’ve heard that this might be possible in Beijing for Beijing hukou holders but it all seems really subjective (even as far as which officer you’re dealing with) – hence the confusion of this entire situation.

… I’ve been getting conflicting info myself every time I call the Beijing PSB and it remains to be seen what we will have to do for our own son – my hope is that as suggested above, I can simply take him to the PSB here with the paperwork and get his family visa issued here, but if that fails, I will likely do the same as you’ve pointed out – take him out of the country with a passbook and get his visa issued in the US.
 

As always additional comments and experiences from other readers dealing with similar circumstances are most welcome.

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.