My wife and I got married last year and now we have a baby coming. It was a bureaucratic nightmare to get hitched in the first place but getting the paperwork done in preparation for the birth seems to be even worse. I know two other couples who were in the same situation but opted to get out of the Heavenly Kingdom ASAP to give birth back in England. I, on the other hand, is kind of stuck here on a 3 year contract with my company that I am happy to fulfill since we have a pretty good life in Yunnan.

I am looking for advice from mixed couples who've been through having a baby in China, particularly regarding the following issues:

Did you opt for Chinese citizenship or dual? I know China officially doesn't accept dual citizenship but I also know that they can't do anything about it if your baby meets the requirements from your native country and is given citizenship and issued a passport. Effectively a dual citizenship.

We have been told that I need to supply the Family Planning and Birth Control Service in Kunming with an official document from my country stating that I haven't already got children. I was surprised to hear that so I contacted my embassy. They were equally perplexed since they'd never heard of such a demand and couldn't think of anyone in my country who could issue such a document. Furthermore they were almost 100 percent certain that a foreigner didn't need to provide such a document but that it was okay to demand it from the Chinese spouse. I contacted the Family Planning Service again and they repeated the demand. It turned into somewhat of an argument and the person I was talking to refused to give her name -which I needed since I felt I had to take the issue up with some higher authority. Then I contacted a person I know at the PSB who told me it was perfectly allright for a government official not to give his or her name. This left me in a right pickle since when I called the Family Planning in Beijing they couldn't even look into the case if I didn't provide them with a contact person.

At that point I decided to wave our child's Chinese citizenship and go just for my native country's. Not to be a cultural supremacist or anything but what can China really offer it's citizens after all?

Anyway, any of you mixed couples out there who can offer me advice on forgetting the Chinese citizenship? We've spoken to the hospital and they say that if we don't want the kid to be a citizen they don't need to see the Family Planning papers but will issue a birth certificate nevertheless. All they need is the marriage certificate, my papers and some kind of mother-child paperwork that we've been visiting 8 different places to get so far. There is light at the end of the tunnel though, we should get that done with in a few weeks. That seems to be enough to apply for my country's citizenship -together with some other documents we already got.

How did you guys approach this whole thing?

I hope I make at least a little sense in my stressed out condition.

if you want your kid to have dual/multiple citizenship, there is a very easy way to do it. you could organise having your baby in a hospital in hong kong, China., that will cost you about HKD$40,000 (hospital bill) + travel + accommodation while you and your wife are there. since your wife is a mainland chinese citizen (i guess), your new born will have the hong kong chinese permanent resident status straight away. once you have the birth certificate, you could organised a 'home permit' for the baby, the permit would enable the baby to enter china and to live in china without any further paperwork and restriction, circumventing all chinese red tape. :-) as hong kong chinese permannet citizen are allow technically to have multiple citizenship as per The Basic Law of hong kong, your baby will have a brithish passport, a Hong kong SAR passport, a 'home permit', or whatever passport he/she is entitled to have and a chinese citizenship. :-)

That's an idea but it sounds pretty troublesome as well. I don't think the airlines allow 9 months pregnant women aboard either.

yeah, a bit too risky to travel in her condition.

actually, many expat mixed couple in shenzhen do exactly that because it is the easier way to beat the chinese red tape.

I thought that you could not have joint nationality with Mainland Chinese.

But HK SAR/UK is possible.

As far as am aware, the only advantage of a Chinese citizenship is the Hukou, and this makes local schooling easier. Other than that, I can see only barriers.

Regards the certificate that you have no kids back home. As far as I am aware, there is no agency in the UK capable of (or mandated) providing such a document.
Probably the usual case of the admin person not knowing what they are doing. Try saying to the family planning that the UK Embassy needs them to provide a letter, making the request and it must cite the relevant regulations.

If you go to Shanghai you may find it easier.

We had a baby in Kunming 1,5 year ago and chose for the foreign nationality to avoid all paperwork you are describing and because we are thinking about leaving China before she has the age to go to school anyway.

The Chinese government however still considers her as Chinese because she is born in China out of a Chinese woman. Because of this they won't give her a residence permit in her foreign passport, every time we leave the country we have to get an exit permit which thanks god is quite easy to get (small book which looks like a passport), and come back into China with a tourist visa in her foreign passport.

Kunming seems to be one of the worst places on this matter, in many other places they issue the residence permit, or at least give a exit/entry permit so you don't need to go to the Chinese embassy to arrange a tourist visa every time you want to get back in China.

They also won't give her a Chinese passport before we renounce her foreign nationality and renouncing the Chinese nationality seems to be a very long proces.....

Hi Queensway, We've been through much the same thing and it still isn't resolved and probably never will be. Basically for the last year we've been doing as Dave79 suggested but it became a pain to do as we'd moved to Beijing. Of course we could do it from Beijing (infact that's preferable as they entry and exit as opposed to just exit permit in Kunming) but all documents would have to be sent to Kunming PSB by the Beijing PSB as that is where my wife's hukou is and then back to Beijing PSB- lots of opportunities for important documents to go missing!
Its true that they will not renew a chinese visa in a british passport inside China if the baby was born in China and has a chinese parent. However the Chinese embassy in London will issue 12 month multiple entry tourist visas -we got one of these on a trip to UK at Christmas. It cost 200 pounds (my china residence permit only costs 40 RMB) but at least it means we don't need to worry about this for a year and we can enter and exit China at will. The problem with getting the exit permit is that it does take a week (in Kunming) or supposedly 3 weeks if documents are being sent between cities. If for any reason we need to leave China tomorrow I could do it, my wife could do it (she has 2 year UK visa), but our daughter previously couldn't. So getting a long term visa is far preferable to the whole exit permit thing. However it can only be done in the country of citizenship, so we had to do it in the UK.

Giving the Chinese government proof of divorce or children from other marriages seems very reasonable (although I admit that I think the state's role in marriage itself is reasonable). For me, it was a quick and painless process. When the US consular official visited Kunming, I dropped in and got my Single-Status proof on papyrus. Unless you have to take the time and expense to travel to your country's embassy outside of Kunming, what's the worry? Why make a moral issue of it to some beleaguered bureaucrat?

As far as citizenship, tigertiger is correct: schooling in China, if you're here long-term, is the most important and possibly the only reason to get Chinese citizenship for your kid. But unless you're coming from Somalia, getting your kid your country's citizenship—and yes, according to Chinese law you must choose one or the other—is definitely the way to go.

Dave
Do you have a work visa in China? If so, you should "not" need to make the baby enter/exit the country for the Visa as he/she is your dependent. The Beijing PSB can take care of this in country for a minor fee - unless they're giving you "special" treatment because of your British passport - which is doubtful.

When I worked in Beijing, the company I worked for took care of all of this - albeit in a very sloppy manner, creating significant stress for all involved - but it eventually got done - although the front desk clerk had to ask her supervisor for assistance as it's an unusual procedure and process for newborns.

The bureaucratic way, regardless of industry and or country, is to just say "no" if they don't know, so they can dump you onto someone else - so you need to escalate to higher management as politely as possible and try not to lose your cool, plan on spending the entire day if not several slowly wending your way thru the tiresome process and be thankful you're not a US citizen.

Although America's still a great country - we citizens get utterly reamed by embassy fees (amongst other things). We give billions of our tax dollars to other countries for "free" - but charge our own citizens exorbitant fees for things we already pay for with our tax dollars. For example - just adding extra pages to our passports - which used to be a free service, now costs us about USD 82 - legalized sodomy. Before anyone berates the hapless US embassy staff, note they have no control over this - it's controlled by their bosses - the US State Department who approve all things related to homeland security, to include financial sodomy (an old term I just made up).

Vearn, getting a certificate to say you are not married is not the problem. Of course the embassy/consulate can give you that.

Getting something saying you have no children is impossible as China is possibly the only country in the world which monitors this so rigorously.

We went through the same thing. The British Consulate said they could not do it. They could, however, witness my affidavit saying I have no children - not the same thing at all and not sufficient for the kunming authorities.