Academic outraged at request for hukou in UK visa application
Academic is angry after staff at embassy asked for his household registration document
A prominent mainland rural affairs expert has called on the British embassy in Beijing to change its visa-application policies after he was asked to provide a household registration document to travel to the country.
A researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Rural Development Institute, Professor Yu Jianrong, said he was enraged when the workers from the embassy's outsourced visa application centre demanded the document in addition to his passport and national identity card.
The household registration, or hukou, system has long been criticised by Yu and other rural affairs experts, as it prevents mainland rural migrants from accessing education, health care and housing when they move to cities to find work.
"I was deeply humiliated because I was not required to provide any hukou document when I was applying for visas to France and the United States after 9/11," Yu told the Sunday Morning Post.
He applied for the visa on Thursday after receiving a speaking invitation from the London School of Economics at a forum later this year.
Yu, who arrived at the centre, as is his style, wearing an old overcoat, rejected an offer of help from a Chinese man at the office.