On July 29, a Guangzhou resident was denied a certificate of non-criminal record when police informed him he had “already been executed,” according to a report from the Guangdong Radio and Television network.
At Fuhua police station in Panyu, officers told the man that he had committed a serious kidnapping offense in 2001, and was executed in 2006.
Of course, given the fairly reliable evidence that the 45-year-old man, surnamed Chen, was still alive and well, the police dug deeper into their records to discover he shared the same name and ID number as the executed criminal.
According to the South China Morning Post, Chen said he had never encountered problems with his ID card in the last 10 years since his ‘execution,’ and was even able to acquire a permit to travel to Hong Kong and Macau in 2008.
After confirming Chen's account, police eventually provided him with a certificate of non-criminal record last Friday, August 5.
The somewhat controversial Chinese Resident Identity Card Law, last modified in 2003, requires every citizen over the age of 16 to apply for a hukou, or ID card. Chinese citizens under 16 years of age are also permitted to apply voluntarily.
Like a driver’s license, a Chinese ID card lists one’s full name, gender, ethnicity, date of birth, domicile, identification number and photo. As of January 2013, Beijing initiated trials to include fingerprints in the ID cards, making it more difficult to forge the cards.
However, because a Chinese citizen’s identification number never changes (see formula below) and Chinese ID cards lack another authentication code, there is no way to deregister a lost card, even after it’s been reported to police.
As a result, identification theft is extremely common in China, where stolen ID cards sell for around RMB200 each on the black market, according to people.cn.
[Cover image via lifehacker.com]
READ MORE: Is Beijing Granting Hukou to Illegal Second Children?
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