China issued a regulation on Wednesday granting its servicemen
and armed police civilian identity cards, aiming to help them
handle personal affairs such as banking and car, house and
insurance purchases.
"The regulation signifies an ending of civilian identity card
absence in Chinese army and armed police forces," a spokesman of a
special military office in charge of the matter told Xinhua.
The new regulation will take effect on Jan. 1 2008.
"Due to the change of army units, posts and military rankings,
soldiers and officers have to constantly changes their military
cards, which made it difficult in dealing with civilian cases," the
spokesman said.
According to the regulation, servicemen and armed police were
going to have both civilian and military identity cards from the
start of next year.
The civilian identity cards shall be used in private and
civilian matters that requires the identification of their
citizenship, while the military identity cards shall be used in
occasions that need to identify their military identities, the
spokesman said.
The legal rights of servicemen as "ordinary citizens" would be
better protected, he said, stressing "putting the military
population under the state umbrella would strengthen national
demographic management".
The card application must be filed by soldiers or offices with
the police authorities of their stationed counties via military
units above the regiment level, the regulation said, adding those
who had already had civilian cards before enlisted would not need
to apply for new ones if the original were still valid.
It also threatened penalties against forgery, cheating,
swindling and leasing in the application and use of identity cards
by servicemen or armed police, and "leakage of state secret and
personal information" in the issuance and management of such
cards.
China began a residential identity card system in 1985 which
ruled that servicemen and armed police had separate military or
armed police cards instead of civilian identity cards.
A Law on Resident Identity Cards which came into effect in 2004
for the first time enlarged the card issuance scope to servicemen
and armed police.
The law says Chinese citizens above 16 all have identity cards
which are a citizen's "sole and inalterable permanent code". The
18-digit identity code includes 6 numerals representing the
holder's birth place, 8 for date of birth, and another 4 for sex
and differentiation.
(Xinhua News Agency November 1, 2007)