Having a second child in China?

We're not disagreeing, dear.

I'm speaking in the general big-picture sense- something I do a lot here- and in that sense I'm right.

You're speaking in a specific local sense, and in that sense you're right. Areas with lots of minorities, or lots of people rich enough to shrug off the fines, will indeed have more true siblings.

It also helps that the penalties for additional children have become MUCH less severe than they used to be. When all this started, violators would lose their iron-rice-bowl jobs, be re-assigned to some bleak countryside, see their home bulldozed, find it difficult to get their kids into school...they would be generally screwed.

Today, it's all done with money, the Socialist way.

In my personal opinion, anyone who has two children has had sex at least twice. The exception would be if they are twins, or conceived through IVF, or adopted.

In my personal opinion, anyone who has two children has had sex at least twice. The exception would be if they are twins, or conceived through IVF, or adopted.

Now we have the evidence.  A growing number of Chinese couples are having more than the official "one sex act per marriage".  Damned sex fiend perverts!!!
 

Hi I have read through all of your messages and I am very interested in the rules of having a second child.  We had our son 6 months ago and we decided to register him in China.  The reason we did this is because someone I know has been living in China a while and when it was time to send his daughter to school, they told him he couldnt.  They said she had to go to an international school.  I think they managed to get her into a public school in the end but they had to pay a hefty fee.

So we decided to register our little one as Chinese so when he goes to school we wont have any of these problems and if we ever decide to move to the UK, we can apply for his British passport at anytime. 

I am interested to know if we can have a second child and register the next one as Chinese as well.  Any thoughts?

Rules do vary, but unless you are in a really rural area, your wife is an only child or one of the minority nationalities (anything but Han), the odds are pretty low for her being allowed to have a second child, especially since the first was a boy.

That being said, the penalties vary from "slightly worse than a parking ticket" up to "things you REALLY don't want to contemplate."

Your best bet - try to find someone else with a local hukou who's got a boy with a younger sibling and have a chat.

I never did really clarify my original post, however my wife (Chinese) is pregnant with our 2nd child. The family friend mentioned in the OP was a retired gov. employee of some office that handles such things, and was able to arrange for us to get another 2nd child birth permission approval through the gov. I guess it's that old standard of rules vs. guanxi most of us know so well. Regardless the kids are US citizens (The above poster may be making a mistake by seeking Chinese citizenship first for the child) and not part of China's population problems anyway as we'll eventually be leaving.

If you get Chinese citizenship for your child first and intend to get foreign citizenship later, realize that it might be a hassle. There's another thread about this somewhere that I'll try and dig up but I seem to remember several posters who had gotten their children registered on their spouse's Chinese hukou had trouble applying for the foreign citizenship later.

MB, you might check out this thread http://raoulschinasaloon.com/index.php?topic=1689.0

for the pros and cons of Chinese citizenship for your children. Raoul has a post in there that outlines the issue really well. For sure it will make having a second child a problem. My two children are American citizens, they have no hukous, so no one has bothered us about them. If I had tried to put my daughter on my husband's hukou there might have been trouble, since she was our second and we didn't wait the 5 years between children that his hometown's laws require.