The Resident Identity Card () is an official
identity document
An identity document (abbreviated as ID) is a documentation, document proving a person's Identity (social science), identity.
If the identity document is a plastic card it is called an ''identity card'' (abbreviated as ''IC'' or ''ID card''). ...
for personal identification in the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
. According to the second chapter, tenth clause of the ''Resident Identity Card Law'', residents are required to apply for resident identity cards from the local
Public Security Bureau, sub-bureaus or local executive police stations.
[中华人民共和国居民身份证法 – www.gov.cn](_blank)
/ref>
History
Prior to 1984, citizens within the People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
were not required to obtain or carry identification in public. On April 6, 1984, the State Council of the People's Republic of China
The State Council of the People's Republic of China, also known as the Central People's Government, is the chief administrative authority and national cabinet. It is constitutionally the highest administrative organ of the country and the e ...
passed the ''Identity Card Provisional Bill'' (), commencing the process of gradual introduction of personal identification, in the footsteps of many developed countries at the time. The first generation identification cards were single paged cards made of polyester film. Between 1984 and 1991, trials for the new identity card system took place in Beijing
Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
, Shanghai
Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...
and Tianjin
Tianjin is a direct-administered municipality in North China, northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the National Central City, nine national central cities, with a total population of 13,866,009 inhabitants at the time of the ...
. Shan Xiurong (), a Chinese Opera performer and soprano from Beijing, was the first person to receive a first-generation identity card in China.
On September 6, 1985, the Standing Committee
A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization. A committee may not itself be considered to be a form of assembly or a decision-making body. Usually, an assembly o ...
of the 12th National People's Congress
The National People's Congress (NPC) is the highest organ of state power of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The NPC is the only branch of government in China, and per the principle of unified power, all state organs from the Sta ...
passed the '' Identity Card Bill of the People's Republic of China'', which regulated that all citizens over the age of 16 apply for identification cards. At that point, the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
Ministry may refer to:
Government
* Ministry (collective executive), the complete body of government ministers under the leadership of a prime minister
* Ministry (government department), a department of a government
Religion
* Christian mi ...
created a unified authority responsible for the issuing and management of the ID cards. From 2003, it is reported that a total of 1.14 billion ID cards have been created in China, for a total of 960,000,000 holders. However, as a result of technological development and certain techniques made available to the civilian population, the existing cards became relatively easier to counterfeit, opening the increasing threat of false identification.
On June 1, 2003, the National People's Congress passed the new '' Resident Identity Card Law'', which expanded the scope of documents issued, and allowed soldiers in the People's Liberation Army
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the military of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Republic of China (PRC). It consists of four Military branch, services—People's Liberation Army Ground Force, Ground Force, People's ...
and members of the People's Armed Police
)
, abbreviation = PAP ("People's Armed Police") CAPF ("Chinese Armed Police Force"), formerly abbreviated''Wujing'' ( zh , s = 武警 , p = Wǔjǐng , l = Armed Police , labels = no ), or WJ as on vehicle license plates
, patch ...
to apply for special identity cards. Individuals under the age of 16 were also permitted to voluntarily apply for an identification card. The law also established the use of newer, second-generation cards, which are machine-readable and more difficult to forge.
Contents
The identity card contains basic information regarding the individual, such as the following:
;Reverse side
*Full name
A personal name, full name or prosoponym (from Ancient Greek ''prósōpon'' – person, and ''onoma'' –name) is the set of names by which an individual person or animal is known. When taken together as a word-group, they all relate to that ...
– in Chinese character
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...
s only. Non-Chinese ethnic names and foreign names are transliterated into Chinese. First-generation ID cards contained handwritten names for rare Chinese characters, whilst the second-generation cards exclusively used computer-printed text in a larger font compared to that of the first generation, and do not support rarer characters.
*Gender
Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
– containing one character for either male () or female ().
*Ethnicity
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...
– as officially listed by the People's Republic of China.
* Date of birth – listed in the Gregorian calendar
The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It went into effect in October 1582 following the papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII, which introduced it as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian cale ...
format, in Big-endian (ISO 8601
ISO 8601 is an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and time-related data. It is maintained by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was first published in 1988, with updates in ...
) order.
* Domicile – the individual's permanent residence as dictated by the ''Identity Card Bill of the People's Republic of China''.
* Identification number
*Photo of the individual
;Obverse side
*Issuing authority (first-generation cards utilised a stamp; second-generation cards display text only)
*The limits to validity of the document (for individuals under 16 years of age: five years; for individuals between 16 and 25 years of age: ten years; for individuals between 26 and 45 years of age: twenty years; for individuals over 46 years of age: long-term)
In addition, more detailed personal information can be obtained by viewing hukou information from the card database. Starting on January 1, 2013, Beijing has started trials to include fingerprints in the ID cards, making it more difficult to forge ID cards or for people to use the ID cards of others.
In 1984, discussion over the contents of the identity card became controversial regarding whether to include details such as "marital status" and "occupation"; considering the actual situation of the People's Republic of China at the time, these details ultimately were not included in the ID card.
The first-generation ID cards contained a black-and-white photograph portrait of the individual; following the introduction of the second-generation cards, all identification portraits are printed in colour. From 1 January 2013 a mandatory switch to the second-generation cards came into force; all first-generation cards became void and unusable. If used, first-generation cards are treated as expired ID cards, and will not be accepted. It is a criminal offense to accept first-generation ID cards if the person who accepts it knows that it is a first-generation card.
The dimensions of the second-generation cards are 85.725 mm × 53.975 mm × 0.900 mm, and the identity photo is sized at 358 × 441 pixels (width by height), printed at a resolution of 350dpi on RGB using 24-bit True Color, prepared using JPEG compression techniques in line with the requirements of ISO DIS 10918-1. The final image appears as a 26 mm × 32 mm portrait box in the top-right hand corner.[
]
Additional features in ethnic minority areas
Within the ethnic minority regions in China, identity cards possess corresponding text in the respective minority language for both first-generation and second-generation cards. For example, cards officially signed and issued in Guangxi
Guangxi,; officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People's Republic of China, located in South China and bordering Vietnam (Hà Giang Province, Hà Giang, Cao Bằn ...
all contain accompanying text in Zhuang, as well as Chinese characters. According to the fourth clause of the ''Resident Identity Card Law'', "based on the ''de facto'' situation within the organs of self-government within autonomous ethnic regions, the content of the resident identity card can, alongside Chinese characters, be decided to include the text of the ethnic group exercising regional autonomy or choice of a local generic text". This law permits resident identity cards within designated ethnic minority regions to have bilingual text, and depending on region, cards may contain accompanying text in Zhuang, Uyghur, Yi, Tibetan, Mongolian or Korean.
Ethnic minority residents represented by the local autonomous region can apply to have an additional ethnic minority language displayed on their identity cards, whilst Han Chinese and other ethnic residents' cards only have Chinese characters displayed. Ethnic minorities within their representative autonomous regions can have their personal name displayed in both their native language and Chinese characters; for example, within Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a card belonging to a Uyghur may display the cardholder's name as "" ( Effendi Nasreddin), however ethnic Kazakhs and Xibe people living in Xinjiang may only have their names written in Chinese. The following table shows the languages used on identity cards within minority regions:
Identity card number
From October 1, 1999, the PRC State Council approved the establishment of a citizen identification number system, and currently consists of an 18-digit code. This number has a function similar to that of the social security number
In the United States, a Social Security number (SSN) is a nine-digit number issued to United States nationality law, U.S. citizens, Permanent residence (United States), permanent residents, and temporary (working) residents under section 205(c)(2 ...
in the United States. Each citizen has a unique number that remains unchanged for their entire lifetime.
*Address code refers to the resident's location, where administrative divisions
Administrative divisions (also administrative units, administrative regions, subnational entities, or constituent states, as well as many similar generic terms) are geographical areas into which a particular independent sovereign state is divi ...
(including cities, banners, and districts) have their own specific codes. (For example, the code for Xicheng District in Beijing
Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
is 110102.) Change of address does not modify this code, however, which means that the code therefore reflects one's birthplace or the location of one's first-time card issuance (in the case where people are born before the resident identity card system was introduced).
*Date of Birth in the form YYYY-MM-DD.
*Order code is the code used to disambiguate people with the same date of birth and address code. Men are assigned to odd numbers, women assigned to even numbers.
*The Checksum is the final digit, which confirms the validity of the ID number from the first 17 digits, utilizing ISO 7064:1983, MOD 11-2. The checksum is obtained by:
#Marking the Identity card number right-to-left , for the parity-check codes;
#Weight coefficient calculation ;
#:
:
#Calculation of
#
;Checksum derivation process in Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to:
* Visual Basic (.NET), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET
* Visual Basic (classic), the original Visual Basic suppo ...
Dim a, w, s ,id
msgbox "This procedure for checking the identity card number and or-bit",vbokonly+vbinformation,"identity check procedures"
id=inputbox("Enter the ID number 15 or 18 before the identity card numbers of 17 or","ID","11010519491231002")
if vartype(id) <> 0 then
'Test the legality of the importation of numbers
l = 0
do until l = 1
l = 1
p = ""
if len(id) <> 17 then
if len(id) <> 15 then
l = 0
p = "enter the median is not correct, please enter 15 or 17-digit."
end if
end if
for i = 1 to len(id)
a = mid(id, i, 1)
if asc(a) < asc("0") or asc(a) > asc("9") then
l = 0
p = p & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "Please enter the number, do not include the characters“" & a & "”。"
exit for
end if
next
if l = 0 then
id = inputbox("illegal input" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & p, "input error", id)
end if
loop
'Will be number 15 or 17 places to number
if len(id) = 15 then
id = left(id, 6) & "19" & right(id, 9)
end if
'Number 17 for the calculation of parity-check codes
for i = 2 to 18
a = mid(id, 19-i, 1)
w = 2^(i-1) mod 11
s = a * w + s
next
s = (12 - (s mod 11)) mod 11
if s = 10 then s = "X"
'After checking the number of output
inputbox "the identity card number of the parity-check codes for the“" & s & "”" & vbcrlf & vbcrlf & "by checking the ID card numbers are as follows:", "Check completed", id & s
end if
;Checksum derivation process in TypeScript
TypeScript (abbreviated as TS) is a high-level programming language that adds static typing with optional type annotations to JavaScript. It is designed for developing large applications and transpiles to JavaScript. It is developed by Micr ...
// Must input 17 bit string of RID from left to right
function calcChecksum(rid: string)
// Test
alert(calcChecksum('63280119790817003')); // will alert 6
;Checksum derivation process in Ruby
Ruby is a pinkish-red-to-blood-red-colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapph ...
# accepts first 17 digits of the card number and calculates checksum
def calculate_checksum(card_id)
sum = 0
card_id.reverse.each_char.with_index do , ch, idx,
w = (2**(idx + 1)) % 11
sum += ch.to_i * w
end
(12 - sum % 11) % 11
end
puts checksum('34262219840209049') # first 17 digits
# => 10
puts checksum('63280119790817003')
# => 6
;Checksum derivation process in Python
>>> id_checksum = lambda s:(1 - 2 * int(s, 13)) % 11
>>> id_checksum('63280119790817003')
6L
>>> id_checksum('34052419800101001')
10L # according to the standard, this means 'X'
;Checksum derivation process in PHP
/**
*身份证验证,传入身份证,返回true即为正确。 ID number validation, pass in ID number, return true if success.
*只能传入字符串,传入参数必须加引号。 can only pass in strings, parameter should be surrounded by quote marks.
**/
function check_id_number($id)
;Checksum derivation process in R
> checkCode
function(ID)
> print(checkCode('34262219840209049'))
10
Usage of identification
The identity card is the only acceptable legal document used to obtain resident permits or driving licenses, open bank accounts, register for mobile phone numbers, apply for tertiary education and technical college for mainland Chinese citizens, and is one of the acceptable legal documents used to buy train tickets and pass through security checkpoints within domestic terminals at airports in mainland China. Documentation is also required for marriages, household registrations and legal cases.
Recently, there have been more services that require the display of Resident Identity Cards, such as at Internet cafes and certain stores.
Police are required to inspect identification documents where:
* Criminal suspects need to be identified;
* To inspect those related to personnel involved in an incident;
* In the occurrence of a serious security emergency, and there is a requirement to obtain the identity of a person at the scene;
* If the law requires so during a case.
Anti-counterfeiting measures
First generation identity card
Polyester plastic film, which utilizes an anti-counterfeit laser logo.
Second generation identity card
Second-generation identity cards contain a non-contact IC chip card, a directional holographic "Great Wall
The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand Li (unit), ''li'' long wall") is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection agains ...
" image, an anti-counterfeiting film made of green multi-layer polyester (PETG) composite material, optical variable optical storage containing the text "中国CHINA" situated on the card, and a microfilm string generating the letters "JMSFZ" (initials for the Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
of "Jumin Shenfenzheng"), and a "Great Wall" logo revealed by ultraviolet light.[第二代居民身份证的防伪特征]
/ref>
Security and criticism
Unlike the biometric identity cards in EU countries which comply with ICAO
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sch ...
standards, the second-generation ID card imposes older technologies similar to MIFARE used on public transportation systems, which, unlike its ICAO-compliant counterparts, lacks the proper encryption of personal data such as BAC control, thus making the information stored on the chip openly accessible to any ID card readers at a near enough distance. Also, because identity cards lack a different numbering scheme from the citizen's identity number for Chinese nationals, there's currently no way to deregister a lost ID card completely even when the loss of the identity card is reported to the police.关注二代身份证缺陷:法律惩治尚无法治本
/ref> The above characteristics have made identity cards vulnerable to identification theft.[倾听·转型中国:丢了身份证,安全咋保障](_blank)
/ref>
See also
* Chinese Foreign Permanent Resident ID Card
* Residence Permit for Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan Residents
* Taiwanese identity card
* Indian identity card
* Hong Kong identity card
* Macau identity card
* Singaporean identity card
* Identity document
An identity document (abbreviated as ID) is a documentation, document proving a person's Identity (social science), identity.
If the identity document is a plastic card it is called an ''identity card'' (abbreviated as ''IC'' or ''ID card''). ...
References
External links
PRC Resident Identity Card law
Chinese ID Card (Resident Identity Card) Number Lookup
{{Portal bar, China
Identity documents of China
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
Society of the People's Republic of China