Police uncover gang allegedly selling hukou

Beijing police recently uncovered a gang of 16 members who allegedly helped university graduates get illegal Beijing hukou, or household registrations, for payment.

The gang helped about 80 graduates get Beijing hukou since May 2011 and earned more than 3 million yuan ($487,555) from that, Beijing police said.

The Beijing procuratorate has approved the arrest of 13 people in the gang who are suspected of selling official documents and abuses of power.

The police were tipped off about the gang bay an online article that talked about selling Beijing hukou eligibility for 300,000 yuan. Instructed by Fu Zhenghua, chief of the Beijing Public Security Bureau, Beijing police established a special team to investigate the case and soon targeted a suspect surnamed Tian.

Police found that Tian, the manager of an information technology company and a current graduate student, colluded with employees of personnel departments of more than 10 State-owned enterprises and hi-tech companies that have quotas to sponsor hukou for employees and charged graduates tens of thousand yuan to several hundred thousand yuan for sponsorship.

Beijing police detained Tian, 42, in his home in Xicheng district on July 15 and the remaining 16 suspects had been detained as of August 18.

Beijing police said they will investigate those graduates who obtained their Beijing hukou illegally and deal with them according to the law.

There is a migrant population of about 8 million people in Beijing, but only an average of 180,000 per year over the past 10 years are eligible for Beijing hukou.

In China, a local hukou is tightly interwoven with many benefits. Most civil servants and employees of State-owned enterprises in Beijing can get Beijing hukou. A Beijing hukou entitles its holder to advanced social welfare and can help the holder’s children enter elite universities more easily than children from other parts of the country, as there are a large number of elite universities in Beijing.

Those without Beijing hukou also experience many restrictions in buying properties in Beijing. Children without Beijing hukou are only eligible to attend primary schools here if their parents can present five kinds of documents.