Checking our son's birth certificate, the only reference to a government office is "National Health and Family Planning Commission of the PRC".

Assuming your child was born in Kunming, Google search for local office of same nature brings up "Kunming City Maternal and Child Health Hospital" at 5 Huashan West Rd, Kunming.

It is also listed as "Kunming Municipal Service Center for Maternal and Child Health and Family Planning". They should at least know where to go, if cannot handle your case themselves.

Somewhat related recent development - starting this semester, public schools are banned from teaching English in grades 1 and 2.

Noticed this thread, and want to update some details based on my experience in 2022.

I do not have permanent residency, but due to uncommon employment situation the district's work permit bureau essentially required me to subscribe to the local social security scheme. So I do not think that permanent residency is required.

I also got the health insurance card, with added complication that they could not write it for foreign name, so I had to invent myself a Chinese name on the spot. I'm sure that should I ever need to use it, questions will arise because obviously I don't have the same name on my passport.

About the pension part of social security, I was warned that I will hit 60 years before the 15 years of payments is full, so I will have to make payments after retiring also, before I could get the retirement benefits.

Bumping this thread again because new school semester is just beginning, as reference of recent experience for any families in similar situation - specifically about the choice between public vs private schools.

We live in northern Kunming, but much of this applies elsewhere as well.

Our son is treated as Chinese national, so last spring we went through the standard preregistration process for primary schools. Essentially the local education bureau then informs you which public (government funded, and therefore the cheapest) schools you could choose from.

Parent's of foreign children would skip this, and ask directly from schools.

Because we have not bought property here, we were only given a public school choice outside the city, one that caters to nearby villagers, and were told to seek a private school if such suits us better.

Situation may be different for foreigners who have bought property in the area.

Related to private schools, at least in our area lot of primary schools that were originally started as private schools have changed into public schools in last few years. This was bit of a downer, because in our immediate surroundings there are several primary schools, and all of our son's friends in the neighborhood go to one of those.

The one private school we found around here, and the one our son will attend, is Haibei Chinese-English Primary School, which is located close to Yunnan Wildlife Park. They have campuses elsewhere in Kunming too. It's about 3x more expensive than the public schools around here, and teach normal Chinese curriculum with some added emphasis on English language.

Between the lines I read that there is more to the question/challenge of getting her passport than the name on either of the birth certificates.

Is it that you want the passport, but more specifically you want the passport with name of your choice on it, rather than any/current name? Or is this a question of questionable nationality rather than birth name? Like, does she have Chinese citizenship and ID?

I am pretty sure that the ORIGINAL birth certificate cannot be altered now, 18 years after birth, so this would be more like a process of acquiring a name change. I don't know how that goes in China.

Might be different in UK, but in my home country within EU, it doesn't matter what name our son had´s on his Chinese birth certificate. There is no requirement of having my family name on it, for him to be recognized as my descendant, and obtaining EU passport or other privileges with that recognition.

It was only that the first passport (and other registrations) had to be done with the exact Pinyin transliteration of the Chinese name. If we/he later wants to change the name, he can do that and then get new passport/other documents with the new name. We might do that, because the direct Pinyin version results in a bit incorrect spelling. But as far as just getting a passport goes, that's has not been a problem.