Misery of China’s ‘black kids’about to end
Print Edition
LI Xue, 21, a native Beijinger, has been struggling for 16 years to be registered as a resident of the capital.
Li recently received notice from a local court that her suit against a police station for refusing her application for hukou, China’s system for registering place of residence, would be heard.
Li is the second child of a family which broke the one-child policy, and her suit is the fourth legal action by the family against the police station, after three previous failures.
“No school, no job, no trips by train, no chance of marriage. It is even impossible to buy a cold remedy from the pharmacy,” Li said. She can do nothing without an identification card.
Li is one of about 13 million of China’s “black” population without hukou, according to the sixth national census. Most, like Li, are “unplanned” children whose families have not paid the fine, or “social maintenance fee,” for their violation of China’s family planning policy.
There are now so many of what are referred to as “black kids” that some local governments have loosened hukou policy to require only a birth certificate, a radical change which may put an end to the misery of millions of unregistered people.
The hukou system ties access to basic local welfare and public services to place of residence. In 1998, Li and her parents launched an action against Beijing’s Yongwai police station, which administers household registration in the family’s neighborhood. In three attempts to obtain hukou for Li, the only answer has been: “You can only get it after presenting a birth certificate and paying the social maintenance fee.”
Li was born in 1993 to a handicapped mother and sick father with a monthly income of just 2,000 yuan.
With no ID, she could not go to school or even take vocational training classes.
“I can’t stand a life with no legal identity anymore. My parents broke the one-child policy, why should I suffer this dark life?” Li said.
“I cannot borrow a book from the library or get a position as an hourly worker. It is horrible to think of my life if my parents left me.”
Zhou Lei, a Beijing attorney, said: “The household registration ordinance states that authorities must register all Chinese citizens with no additional conditions.”
Registration should not be linked to the social maintenance fee, according to Li Yonglan, a researcher with the Shandong Academy of Social Sciences. Li said such a link was an unauthorized policy by local governments.
In February, east China’s Shandong Province announced that extra children could register for hukou with only a birth certificate.
Local registration authorities are not allowed to impose conditions or refuse registration to illegitimate or extra births, said a notice from the province’s police department.
Authorities must not delay or shift responsibilities in residence registration, said the notice, which specifically allows registration of “black kids” or “black families.”
Since February, Shandong has registered 120,000 people over a year old who used to be “black.”
Nanchang, capital of east China’s Jiangxi Province, followed suit in April.
The new policies in Shandong and Nanchang decouple hukou from payment of social maintenance fees and stipulate that social security offices must register extra births with no preconditions. Social maintenance fees should be pursued separately, through legal procedures.
In Beijing, Li said: “I hope to get my hukou and legal identity just like anyone else and the sadness of ‘dark kids’ should never be seen again.”
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