China is working towards a unified state population database using identification numbers issued by the public security system as the unique identifiers, according to Zhou Yongkang, Secretary of the Politics & Law Committee of Chinese Communist Party Central Committee.
Politics & Law Committee is the country’s supreme body responsible for social and public security issues in the country.
Under the planned economy which China gradually phased out in the 1990s, different identification systems such as residence registration booklet and grain & oil ration card existed. Letters of introduction from employers were also recognised as valid IDs in many social interactions.
“The old systems associated individuals with their employers and neighbourhoods, which does not suit the current situation where social mobility is the pervasive,” Zhou said. “We are in urgent need of a real-time system which covers the entire citizenry.”
According to the plans that Zhou has revealed, the Central Government will revise legislations pertaining ID issuance and use, consolidate social security, family planning and human resources databases based on the Public Security population information systems. In addition, the central government will take a phased approach to mandate the use of public security identifiers in education, transportation, industry and commerce, taxation and statistics information systems.
“The purpose is to understand the population information, control social mobility and deliver better services,” Zhou stressed.
Zhou did not reveal the timeline for implementation.
China introduced RFID-embedded ID cards to replace their paper based predecessors in 2004. The cards are issued and database managed by the Ministry of Public Security and public security bureaux at various local levels. The database is also shared
However, due to legacy issues from the paper ID era and the lack of standardisation, the current system is error prone, with many citizens facing duplicate ID numbers or mismatch of ID numbers and names. For instance, the different methods of Chinese input employed by different public security bureaux often mean that some rarely-used characters in card holders’ names are not recognised by reading systems in other jurisdictions – a common cause for number-name mismatch.
On April 28, the State Council announced the results of the latest census, conducted in November 2010. According to the reports, China’s total population is estimated to be 1.336 billion, among whom 13 million (estimated) are not registered with the public security system. Urban residence now constitute 50 per cent of the entire population, up from 36 per cent in 2000, when the previous census was undertaken.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Jianggan Li
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 04.05.2011
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