It seems like everybody on that thread without exception rushed to get their kids a passport for their home country. Why is that?
I think one of the reasons a lot of us go straight to the home country passport route is the security we feel that gives us. For instance in this thread
http://raoulschinasaloon.com/index.php?topic=7341.0 about the troubles at the top, reminds us all that an exit strategy is important and that's a lot easier if the kids are on foreign passports.
LD is doing such a good job of answering your questions and you're getting great advice. I will just add that i'm a UK citizen with a 4 year old here and i did not have to make any visits to the embassy pre-birth, and my daughter is not on a Chinese hukou.
I did call the British consulate however to ask about acquiring British nationality for my son, should I choose to do that. They said that it will cost me 1100 yuan for an 'eligibility test' to determine whether my son is eligible for UK citizenship or not. Why the hell wouldn't he be eligible? Did any of you guys have to do that? Once that check is complete, and assuming he is indeed eligible, it will cost a further 685 yuan to get a 'certificate of nationality' or something like that. Seems like a massive swindle.
That does sound like a swindle. If you are British of British parents then your child is pretty much automatically presumed to be British. If you're British by birth but your parents are not then i think they have to determine eligibility - whatever that means.
I live down south so i dealt with the Hong Kong embassy when registering citizenship and i guess they have so much more experience in dealing with this that it all seemed really straightforward.