Chinese nationality law
Chinese nationality law details the conditions by which a person holds the nationality of the People's Republic of China. The primary law governing these requirements is the Nationality Law of the People's Republic of China, which came into force on September 10, 1980. Chinese nationality law is complex, as citizenship status and the rights attached to it vary across different jurisdictions within the PRC.
Chinese nationality law primarily follows the principle of jus sanguinis. A person born to at least one Chinese national parent generally acquires Chinese nationality at birth, regardless of place of birth. However, a child born abroad to Chinese parents who have settled overseas and acquired foreign nationality may not be recognized as a Chinese national.
The People's Republic of China nominally considers residents of the Taiwan to be Chinese citizens under its nationality law, based on its claim over territories administered by the Republic of China. However, following the unresolved outcome of the Chinese Civil War and the resulting separation of administration across the Taiwan Strait, residents of Taiwan are governed under a separate legal system in practice and do not exercise citizenship rights of the People's Republic of China. They may not vote, hold public office or receive social welfare benefits reserved for full citizens of mainland China.
Chinese nationals with mainland residency who voluntarily acquire foreign citizenship automatically lose Chinese nationality. By contrast, most residents of the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau held foreign nationality under the laws of other states prior to them becoming part of the PRC in the 1990s. These individuals were permitted to retain such nationalities, which has resulted in a significant number of residents of Hong Kong and Macau holding foreign nationalities, most commonly British or Portuguese, alongside Chinese nationality.
Although mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau are all administered by the PRC, Chinese citizens do not have automatic residence rights in all three jurisdictions; each territory maintains a separate residency and immigration policy. Voting rights and freedom of movement are tied to the region in which a Chinese citizen is domiciled, determined by hukou in mainland China and right of abode in the two special administrative regions.
Officially, the People's Republic of China permits foreign nationals to acquire Chinese citizenship through naturalization after renouncing their previous nationality. Foreigners may naturalize if they are permanent residents in any part of China or they have immediate family members who are Chinese citizens. However, naturalization is not treated as an individual right. In practice, naturalization is extremely rare and the process widely regarded as difficult due to the broad discretionary authority exercised by state authorities, and the absence of clearly defined eligibility criteria.
History
Qing policy
Before the mid-19th century, nationality issues involving China were extremely rare and could be handled on an individual basis. Customary law dictated that children born to Chinese subjects took the nationality of the father, but did not have clear rules for renunciation of citizenship or the naturalization of aliens. Imperial Chinese subjects were traditionally severely restricted from traveling overseas and international travel was only sanctioned for official business. Disputes arising from nationality questions became more common as the Qing dynasty was forced through a series of unequal treaties to open up trade with Western empires and allow its subjects to migrate overseas.The Qing government created the first Chinese nationality law in 1909, which defined a Chinese national as any person born to a Chinese father. Children born to a Chinese mother inherited her nationality only if the father was stateless or had unknown nationality status. Women who married foreigners lost Chinese nationality if they took the nationality of their husbands. Nationality could be inherited perpetually from Chinese fathers, making it difficult to lose for men. These regulations were enacted in response to a 1907 statute passed in the Netherlands that retroactively treated all Chinese born in the Dutch East Indies as Dutch citizens. Jus sanguinis was chosen to define Chinese nationality so that the Qing could counter foreign claims on overseas Chinese populations and maintain the perpetual allegiance of its subjects living abroad through paternal lineage.
The 1909 law placed restrictions on Chinese subjects with dual nationality within China. At the time, foreign powers exercised extraterritoriality over their own nationals residing in China. Chinese subjects claiming another nationality by virtue of their birth in a foreign concession became exempt from Qing taxation and legal jurisdiction within Chinese borders. A strict policy against automatic expatriation was adopted to prevent this; a Chinese individual's foreign nationality was not recognized by Qing authorities unless specifically approved. Foreigners who acquired Chinese nationality were subject to restrictions as well; naturalized Qing subjects could not serve in high military or political office until 20 years after becoming a Chinese national, and only with imperial authorization.
Modern China
Nationality law remained largely unchanged in the Republican China, except for a major revision passed by the Kuomintang in 1929 that decoupled a woman's nationality from that of her husband and minimized circumstances in which children would be born stateless. After the Communist Revolution, the new government abolished all republican-era legislation but did not immediately create laws to replace them. Mainland China lacked formal nationality regulations until greater legal reform began in the late 1970s to 1980s. The government unofficially applied the 1929 statute during this time to resolve nationality issues, and also made a mother's nationality normally transferable to her children outside of cases where the father is stateless. The PRC does not recognize dual nationality and actively discouraged its occurrence in its treaties with Indonesia, Nepal, and Mongolia in the 1950s. When the National People's Congress adopted the current nationality law in 1980, a further stipulation was added that automatically revokes nationality from Chinese nationals who settle overseas and voluntarily acquire foreign citizenship.Special administrative regions
Hong Kong was a British colony from 1842 until its transfer to China in 1997. It initially consisted only of Hong Kong Island and was expanded to include Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island in 1860. These areas were ceded in perpetuity to the United Kingdom by the Qing dynasty after the Opium Wars. Britain negotiated a further expansion of the colony to include the New Territories in 1898, which were leased from China for a period of 99 years. Towards the end of this lease, the British and Chinese governments entered into negotiations over the future of Hong Kong and agreed on the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984. The entire territory of Hong Kong would be transferred to China at the conclusion of the New Territories lease in 1997 and governed under Chinese sovereignty as a special administrative region.Macau was established as a trading post in 1557 permanently leased to the Kingdom of Portugal by the Ming dynasty. The territory was later fully ceded in the 1887 Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking, but returned to China in 1999. Following the 1974 Carnation Revolution, Portugal formally relinquished Macau as an overseas province in 1976 and acknowledged it as a "Chinese territory under Portuguese administration." After negotiations on Hong Kong's future had concluded, China and Portugal began deliberations on Macau in 1986 and agreed on the Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration in 1987. Macau would be transferred to China in 1999 and governed largely under the same terms as Hong Kong.
Although most Hongkongers at the time were British Dependent Territories citizens and a substantial number of Macau residents held Portuguese citizenship, China treats all ethnic Chinese born in these territories before and after the handovers as Chinese nationals. Hong Kong BDTCs who did not have strong ties to another British Dependent Territory lost BDTC status on July 1, 1997. Former ethnic Chinese BDTCs could retain British nationality if they had voluntarily registered as British Nationals or acquired full British citizenship as part of the British Nationality Selection Scheme prior to the transfer of sovereignty, while Macau residents with Portuguese citizenship were permitted to continue that status in all cases. However, Chinese authorities treat these individuals solely as Chinese nationals and bar them from receiving British or Portuguese consular assistance while in Chinese territory.
Given that a large number of Hongkongers and Macanese continue to hold dual nationality after the handover, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress issued two sets of "Explanations" of the nationality law as implemented in the special administrative regions so that Hong Kong or Macau residents who acquire a foreign nationality do not lose their Chinese nationality unless they file a declaration of change of nationality.
Since 2021, the government of Hong Kong started refusing to allow consular protection to dual nationals, citing the policy that Hong Kong residents of Chinese descent, whether born in the city or on the mainland, are regarded as Chinese nationals and thus are ineligible.