Parents of an illegitimate child in Beijing recently launched a crowdfunding project to raise money for their daughter's fine, through which they also hoped to trigger discussions about the legitimacy of marriage bonding fertility rights.
"Wu Xia and I started the project on crowdfunding platform dreamore.com, on Sunday when our daughter was born, to raise 43,910 yuan ($7,074) to pay the social maintenance fees," Shen Bolun, the father, told the Global Times Wednesday.
The project was removed from the website 16 hours after it came online and 312 people donated 9,581 yuan. Shen is prepared to refund the donors.
But they decided to proceed with the crowdfunding project on other platforms since it is hard for them to pay for the fine on their own, and they hope more people could focus on the issue.
Without getting married, Shen and Wu needed to prepare several documents, including a paternity certificate and an receipt of the social maintenance fees to get their daughter a household registration, or hukou, in Beijing.
"We hope more people could participate in the project and to donate 10 yuan each. Aside from raising money for the fees, we hope more people could participate in discussing the issue," Shen said.
"We think that the fertility rights should not be linked to marriage. We think it is necessary to make our voices heard," Shen said.
Shen and Wu's project has triggered heated discussion on social media platforms with some Net users saying they support a change in the current regulation which denies a hukou for illegitimate children.
However, some questioned the couple's motive and asked why they did not refuse to pay the fine if they considered it unreasonable.
"As citizens, we hope to get more people to take part in the discussion to drive possible changes in the regulation, but as parents, we hope to give our daughter an identity as soon as possible when there is no chance to resist the regulation now," said Shen.
