Catshanghai

Our first baby is due in May.  Should our baby have British, Chinese or dual nationality?

Ideally we would like our first born child to have dual British and Chinese nationality. This would make it easy to travel and live in Europe or China without any additional visas.

I’ve just telephoned the British Consulate in Shanghai who informed that the Chinese Government does not recognise dual citizenship so we need to make a decision.

Our child will have a very mixed up international identity given the background of his or her parents. Jenny is from Shanghai, but she spent her formative years making friends from around the world and was told by a fortune teller that she would marry a foreigner.

Although I am from the UK, my parent’s family are Jewish and they originate from Germany and Eastern Europe. Our child will be born in Shanghai to a Chinese mother, but he or she will be keeping alive a European Jewish name.

The consulate officer told me that our child will automatically receive hukou or Chinese citizenship as a result of being born in China. We will also be able to apply for our child to get British citizenship and a passport given that I am a UK citizen who was born in Britain. I need to present my passport, birth certificate and my child’s records after the birth.

Our child’s nationality will change once we decide to travel on a British passport. We could choose to travel on a Chinese passport and apply for a visa whenever we go to the UK, but life is so much easier travelling on a British passport. When we arrive in the UK on a British passport our child will lose his or her Chinese citizenship. From this point on, our child will need to travel to China on a British passport and get a visa just like any other foreigner.

I know it is possible to keep two passports and keep this information from the Chinese government, but we were advised not to do this. Our child will in fact be a dual citizen, but only until their first visit overseas.

Given our multiple cross cultural identities, I find the binary logic of choosing a nationality quite strange.