Residency Registration: Fill & Download for Free

This is something that baffles me, a Chinese, as well. I never quite understand Chinese's obsession with real estate. It's not just the price. Young people freshly out of the college are expected to purchase an apartment and be tied down by mortgage. Of course they don't have savings to pay for the down payment, so it's mostly up to their parents to pay for them (sometimes parents are expected to purchase the property in full). This social phenomenon is especially strange considering people aren't purchasing the title of the property, they merely lease the property for a period of time (usually 70 years). After the lease ends, the land goes back to the state. Under this kind of regulation, wouldn't renting make more sense?So I set out to find the answer by posting a question on a Chinese forum a few years back. The result was unexpected and explosive. I got hundreds of angry replies ranting about how I don't understand real life, or how I was a spoiled brat from Beijing and don't understand the hardship of people migrating from small cities or countryside... I guess this kind of emotionally charged responds demonstrated just how important housing is for Chinese people.1. The resident registration system (户口)The most hated resident registration system is the primary reason why people have to buy houses. Unlike America which allow its citizen to freely move around its states, most Chinese citizens are registered resident to the city/county follow their parents. I was born in Beijing to parents with Beijing resident registration, so I have the most envied Beijing resident registration. My friend Ming was born in Hebei Province, and he has the Hebei resident registration. He can visit Beijing, he can work in Beijing, but if he get married and have a child (regardless where the child was born, children follow their parents' resident location), he will not receive government welfare on child support, he cannot send his child to a Beijing school, because he doesn't have Beijing resident registration. And the easiest way to get a residence of Beijing for the child is for 1) Ming marry a Beijing girl, so the baby go with mother's registration; and 2) buy a piece of property in Beijing.This policy was first set up to help manage population, and has been quite effective for the first 40 years of PRC. But after economic revolution, when people start to move around for better education/job opportunities, this policy become more and more cumbersome and extremely unfair to those who want to work and settle down in other regions.Some cities have set up incentive programs to attract people from other regions, but getting into big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai is still very difficult. And buying real estate is relatively easier to achieve. With one-family-one-child policy, young people are under a lot of pressure to get married, settle down, and have children. As a result, they're under a lot of pressure to buy a house so their children can get social welfare and go to school. This creates an enormous financial burden to both husband and wife and their extended families, who are almost obligated to help with the down payment and mortgage. And after the parents pay for the housing, they feel like the should have a say in their children's marriage life... The problem goes on and on and on, all because of the hateful policy of resident registration system.2. Renter unfriendly renting regulations.Another reason people want to buy their own house/apartment is because Chinese's renter law is heavily favors landlord instead of renters. I've heard horror stories about how a landlord could evict their tenants on short notice just because they want to sell the property while the market is good. Renting apartments is like Russian roulette: you never know when you'll end up with a horrible landlord, and there’s very little you can do other than find another place to live. Because the law is not on your side.3. Traditional culturural obsession of owning land.I think Chinese obsession with land is similar to India’s obsession with gold, or America’s obsession with cars. You HAVE to have a piece of your own land or your life won't be complete.Chinese are traditionally attached to the soil, since we have been an agricultural society since the beginning of time. Even though many people don't actually work in the fields or grow crops, we still have that emotional attachment to land ownership. It is important to have a piece of solid ground, a private living space, that's yours. While most people understand on a logical level that they're leasing a piece of property, having that still makes them feel good emotionally.So to sum up the 3 factors:1. People have to buy property if they want to get married and have kids in a different city.2. People are 100 times better off living in their own house than renting.3. People emotionally attached to owning property.With these 3 factors taken together, price is the least of your concern.

We have an internal passport that we use inside Russia and we have an external (“foreign”) passport that we use to travel to other countries. They contain different sets of secondary data (for example, the internal passport includes data on one’s residence registration for the purposes of voting, etc, while the external passport has biometric data, etc), and they are issued and handled according to different rules.Certain groups of Russians are not allowed to travel to other countries without special permission (for example, employees of Russian security agencies), and so they are frequently not allowed to keep their external passports at home. Rather, their external passports are handled by their bosses.An internal passport is required for a number of actions, from voting to buying alcohol (you have to be 18+ to do that). Most adult Russians have an internal passport, while just about 30% of adult Russians have an external passport.Pictured - External (left) and internal Russian passports.

You don’t have to inform the police since it is not the police’s job to track address changes of residents. At least not, as long as you are not convicted of a crime and a court ordered you to inform the police about your movements.You will have to update your address at the residents’ registration office. This is based at the city hall. A failure to do so, will earn you a fine. So, you have to take a proof of residence and go register yourself.