2016年CRI China Helps Citizens without Household Registration

According to the new document, a hukou is a basic right for all citizens since it's linked with social welfare as well as a variety of other rights, thus it should be protected.

The guidelines require the improvement on current household registration 1 policies, including the elimination 2 of the restrictions 3 on citizens' rights to a hukou.

Huang Shuangquan, vice 4 head of the security administration bureau of China's Ministry 5 of Public Security, says the document clarified two bottom lines which cannot be negotiated.

"For local authorities or specific government departments, they should immediately start to revise relevant policies on household registration, with those obstructing 6 citizens access to a hukou abolished. This is our first bottom line. The second one is that the legal rights for citizens to register for a hukou should always be protected and never be harmed under any circumstances."

Unregistered citizens in China, also known as the "black" population, include those born illegally under the one-child policy.

Local authorities may have refused to register children born in breach 7 of the family planning policy, or parents of such children may have not registered them out of fear of punishment.

The "black" population also includes people without a birth certificate, children born out of wedlock 8, orphans 9 adopted outside the official system, and people pronounced missing or dead.

Huang noted 10 that they will open "green channels" so as to improve the efficiency of their work.

"We will assign specific police staff who are familiar with household registration systems to handle citizens' applications. If an applicant 11 brings complete reference files and meets all the demands, the police will handle his or her applications right on the spot. Otherwise, the applicant will be immediately informed with the materials he or she still lacks."

The Public Security authorities will later launch an investigation 12 into each specific situation regarding whether the local citizens are legally registered or not.

Meantime, one of the new documents' highlights is that it also rules out helping 13 those children under a "de facto adoption 14", meaning they are adopted without required registration but already live as foster-children of their adopters.

Without a hukou, these kids encounter a series of obstacles while applying medical or educational welfare.

Gan Weiwei from China's Ministry of Civil Affairs says the new document could be quite beneficial to those children.

"I think the release of this new guideline could effectively solve those children's problems brought by a lack of legal household registration, for them it's good news. The Ministry of Civil Affairs will further cooperate with other relevant departments to solve their issues."

According to the National Population Census 15 in 2010, there are 13 million unregistered people in China, accounting 16 for 1 percent of its population.

For CRI, I'm Xie Cheng.