Shao Yuqin, deputy director of Xiamen Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, clarified Fujian province’s new regulations protecting the rights of overseas Chinese living in the province during a question and answer session on the Xiamen mayor's hotline on Oct 20.
Fujian province recently became the second province in China, after Guangdong province, to introduce new regulations on the rights of overseas Chinese living in the Chinese mainland, with the new rules becoming effective on Sept 1.
The regulations are designed to address the issues most commonly encountered by overseas Chinese returning to China, such as verifying their identity, employment, accessing public education for their children, and purchasing property.
By overseas Chinese, the regulation refers to any Chinese nationals who take up residence in a given foreign country, Shao explained.
The new regulations make clear that if an overseas Chinese possesses a People's Republic of China passport, that has the same validity as the Chinese ID card routinely used in China for verifying a person's identity, the overseas Chinese can therefore use their Chinese passport when dealing with administrative issues connected to civil affairs such as finance, education, health care, transportation, telecommunications, social security, assets registration, business registration and marriage registration.
As for children's education, which is often top of returning overseas Chinese's list of concerns, the regulations stipulate that children of overseas Chinese enjoy the same rights of access to public education as local children in the places where their parents work or their guardians are registered as permanent residents.
There are currently as many as 460,000 overseas and foreign Chinese originating from Xiamen spread across 75 countries and regions around the world, according to Shao.
Xiamen will launch a publicity campaign to raise awareness among the overseas Chinese community of this regulation, which complements Fujian's overseas Chinese-related laws comprehensively, Shao added.
The Xiamen mayor's hotline is 968123.
Shao Yuqin, deputy director of Xiamen Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, answers questions about a regulation to protect overseas Chinese's rights in Fujian province, through the mayor's hotline on Nov 20. [Photo provided to xmfo.gov.cn]
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