China: Beijing father sues officials over son's 'hukou' registration

2015-07-09

Court papers filed by Liu Ming on June 2, 2015. Photo courtesy of Liu Ming.

A father of a four-year-old son in the Chinese capital is suing Beijing's Pinggu district government over his son's lack of household registration documents, or "hukou," which would give him access to crucial public services like healthcare and education in the city.

Liu Ming, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym, has filed a lawsuit at the Pinggu District People's Court in a bid to reverse a decision by officials that his son was born in breach of local birth quotas.

Liu's struggle to obtain the turnkey hukou document for his son illustrates the plight of thousands of other Chinese families, who have been accused of breaching family planning regulations by local officials keen to make birth quota targets.

"They said that I had breached Beijing's family planning policy, and that my son is an excess birth," Liu told RFA's Mandarin Service in a recent interview.

"They refused to put him on the hukou."

But Liu argues that his son is the first child born to his current wife, and that she shouldn't be bound by birth quotas in his earlier marriage.

According to Liu, current restrictions take no account of remarriage, at a time when the divorce rate in China is rising steadily.

Some 3.6 million Chinese couples got divorced in 2014, putting the divorce rate is 2.7 per thousand, compared with 2.6 per thousand in the previous year, according to civil affairs ministry statistics.

"The law shouldn't regulate on the basis of the children born to a couple when deciding on whether they can have more children," Liu said.

"They should take into account whether one of the parties to a remarriage has had any children yet," he said.

"They can't just take away the rights of a person to have children who has never been married before," Liu said.

"As the regulations stand, it would be very hard [for somebody in my position] to find a second marriage partner, unless that person was willing to stay childless for the rest of their life," he said.

"That's why I think the rules are unreasonable."

Liu said he made the decision to sue only after spending several years repeatedly visiting the local police station and district police department in a bid to resolve the impasse, writing countless letters to press his case with the Beijing Municipal People's Congress in a bid to get the law changed.

To date, Liu has had no meaningful response from the authorities, however.

Zhejiang-based lawyer Wu Youshui, who has advised in hukou-related cases for many years, said that hukou registration is the means by which Chinese citizens access their most basic rights.

"If you are a Chinese citizen, then the police should register you on the hukou system without attaching any conditions," Wu told RFA.

"China's Population and Family Planning Law only provides for fines and fees to be levied on the parents of an 'excess birth' child, but there are no restrictions on that child's access to a hukou," he said.

"The authorities should do away with this unreasonable rule immediately, and guarantee the basic rights of children."

Under the current hukou system, which dates back to the Mao era of collective farming and a planned economy, every household accesses services from its place of registration, posing huge social problems for China's hundreds of millions of migrant workers and their families.

Beijing, Shanghai in demand

Hukou registrations in top-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai are in particular demand, as they give access to sought-after and well-funded schools.

In July 2014, China announced it would remove restrictions on anyone wishing to move to smaller towns and cities to find work and educate their children, but raised the bar for transfers to its major cities and megacities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing.

In a legal opinion on the household registration, or "hukou," system, China's cabinet, the State Council, said the moves were aimed at encouraging rural people to migrate to cities to find work and education.

But analysts said the proposed reforms don't go far enough, and many campaigners are calling for the straight-out abolition of the system, which creates "tiers" of geographical privilege.

Liu's case comes as authorities in the northern city of Zhengzhou hold a prominent rights activist who helped large numbers of families with their "hukou" cases after they fell foul of China's draconian family planning regime.

Yang Zhanqing was detained in the central province of Henan on June 12 on suspicion of "running an illegal business."

But Yang's supporters said his detention made no sense in the wake of a relative relaxation in the "one child" population control policy at the beginning of 2013.

Reported by Bai Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Link to original story on RFA website