‘Split up for love’: family separated by war and Covid forced by China’s complex bureaucracy to get divorced to reunite

The war in her home country is preventing a Ukrainian citizen from getting paperwork to let her son leave China and reunite the family

The boy has been separated from his mother for more than a year and was away from his father, who works abroad, for more than five months

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A Chinese man has had to divorce his Ukrainian wife to become sole guardian of their son so the boy can emigrate and reunite with his parents. Photo: SCMP composite

Published: 9:00am, 2 Sep 2022

Chinese government bureaucracy has forced a man separated from his son and wife in different countries due to Covid-19 and Ukraine-Russia war to get divorced to reunite.

The man, surnamed Li, is a Chinese national and lives and works in the Netherlands. His wife is Ukrainian and returned to the country to look after her ill parents when war broke out in February, while their two-year-old son has remained in China since mid-2020.

Li has now had to divorce his wife Victoria and become sole legal guardian of their son Jason so the boy can emigrate to Holland without necessary paperwork from her, who has been displaced by the war.

Victoria and her parents have been moving from one neighbouring country to another as a result, Shanghai Television reported.

Jason, now aged 2, has not seen his mother for more than a year while she has been stuck in Ukraine caring for her ill parents while war rages around them. Photo: gmw.cn

Li, who runs a travel agency in Amsterdam and is an EU permanent resident, took his son to Shanghai in August 2020 to organise the child’s Chinese passport and hukou, a key identification document for Chinese citizens.