PRC IDs will cost Taiwanese their citizenship: official

Citizens the Republic of China (ROC) who obtain identification (ID) cards issued by the government in Beijing will have their ROC citizenship nullified, the nation's top official in charge of China policy said yesterday.

China's security authority announced on Thursday that residents from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau can apply for Chinese IDs if they have settled in China as permanent residents.

Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) quoted lines in the Statute Governing the Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例) as stipulating that ROC citizens are prohibited from obtaining ID cards issued by the People's Republic of China (PRC) or from using PRC passports.

Unless government agencies issue papers proving that acquiring a PRC ID is necessary based on special reasons, those ROC citizens who obtain IDs or passports from China will be subject to loss of their ROC citizenship and the rights that citizenship entails, as well as their military or government posts, according to the cross-strait relations statute.

A member of the Taiwanese community in Beijing said on Thursday that few Taiwanese working, studying or doing business in China are interested in obtaining ID cards there, given that the drawbacks of doing so outweigh the benefits.

Chen Kuo-yuan (陳國原), head of the Taiwanese Business Association in Beijing, said that as far as he knew, no Taiwanese had applied for PRC citizenship yet.

The change would immediately result in a tremendous inconvenience in travel, given that once they became PRC ID or passport holders, they would have to apply for travel permits from the Taiwanese authorities if they wanted to return to Taiwan for visits, Chen said.