The four-year-old son of Yang in Changping District of northwest Beijing was born an extra child in contradiction with China's old family planning policy which only allowed one child to most families in the country.

13 mln Chinese live without resident registrations.[File photo]

Without rendering maintenance payments at costs of hundreds of thousands of yuan to secure a permanent resident status for his son, Yang has found that his boy has been deprived of many rights, such as access to airplanes, publically funded kindergartens and free vaccinations.

In addition, what Yang worries about most is his boy's education, as the child will probably be denied admittance by publicly funded schools. Meanwhile, the tuitions of private schools are too high to afford.

Yang's son is not an isolated case. China has witnessed 13 million people, roughly 1 percent of the entire population, living without resident registrations since the adoption of the old family planning policy. Those people have imposed grave challenges to the fairness and harmony of society, China Business News reported on Tuesday.

According to the sixth nationwide census, residents without the proper registration forms received at local public security offices are the result of any number of factors, such as, abandonment, birth out of wedlock and the dereliction of community-level governments. However, the census also shows that about 60 percent of the unregistered residents are the result of "extra births" when the one-child policy dominated China.

In accordance with the seventh provision of the Residential Registration Regulation ratified in 1958, the infant shall be registered within one month after its birth by household heads, relatives, custodians or neighbors.

However, the regulation contradicts the old family planning policy which requires the families to show their one-child certificates before registering their children.

A general investigation in 2014 showed at least 20 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, including Beijing, Shanghai, Liaoning, Sichuan, Henan and Hubei require the family planning certificates before registering newborns.

Those residents who simply cannot enjoy the same fundamental rights granted China's registered citizens are likely to lose confidence and hold a strong sense of insecurity. They also affect the flow of population, increase the possibility of social instability and aggravate social unfairness, said Wan Haiyuan, researcher from the Macro Economy Department of the National Department and Reform Commission.

According to Wan, the resident registration system, which should be opened unconditionally to all the people born in China, should scrap its peg with social welfare when household information has been put into digital records amid the milieu of the aging population and decreasing demographic bonus.

The Ministry of Public Security held a summit regarding the 13-million unregistered people on Nov. 21 with the hope of solving the issue as soon as possible.

China has decided to loosen its family planning policy by allowing a second child born to each family in the country at the 18th central committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) on Oct. 29, 2015. The new policy will come into effect from March 2016 after formal ratification by the National People's Congress.

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)