Out-of-wedlock kids bear brunt of hukou horror
Print Edition
Many out-of-wedlock children are excluded from China’s strict hukou, or household registration system, which means they are kept away from all sorts of social welfare and public schooling entitled to registered citizens. Sometimes, they are even denied citizenship and become de facto stateless.
From the start, many such children are not officially recognized in some places as they can’t get a birth certificate, a key document needed for citizenship, hukou and ID number, Xinmin Weekly reported yesterday.
Without the birth entry, a child’s bloodline and status of birth cannot be verified. In some instances, they don’t officially exist.
An 8-year-old boy in Beijing has no hukou. Xiaojie’s mother, a divorcee, cannot afford a fine of 330,000 yuan (US$54,354) to legalize his status.
The mother, identified as Liu Fei, has a daughter with her ex-husband. She met Li, a married man, after her divorce and bore Xiaojie in Zhenzhou, capital of central Henan Province.
Liu brought Xiaojie back to Beijing in 2010 but was informed that she had violated the family planning policy and had to pay a fine, otherwise Xiaojie won’t get his hukou. Liu has filed a lawsuit against Fangshan District.
Parents in violation of family planning laws are usually asked to pay “social upbringing fee” — often several times their average annual income — by local governments.
Authorities of Fangshan District, where Liu and her son reside, tallied her fine at 14 times Fangshan’s average income in line with local rules. Liu’s attorney explained that Liu and Li had a child respectively before Xiaojie was born. Xiaojie is their third child. The fine for a second child is usually three to 10 times local average income. If a couple, whether they’re married or not, has a third child, the fine is doubled.
Xiaojie told Xinmin Weekly he would like to join a gang when he grew up so he could take revenge on police and the family planning office, two agencies in charge of hukou registration and meting punishment to parents with extra children.
The Chinese marriage law stipulates that “children born out of wedlock shall enjoy the same rights as children born in wedlock. No one may harm or discriminate against them.”
Having no hukou can sometimes be fatal.
Two girls starved to death at their home in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, in June. Their parents were unmarried. In addition, the mother, Yue Yan, 22, was a child born out-of-wedlock herself and never got her hukou. In frustration, she left her daughters some food and water and locked them inside their home for over a month.
Her counsel defended Yue during her trial, wondering how she could be expected to be a good parent to her daughters when she herself did not get any support from her parents.
Yue’s boyfriend was in jail when the tragedy struck. Both were drug addicts, with Yue, an illiterate, also addicted to online games, who frequently left home for entertainment.
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