China document photos online

In November 2012 China began stamping a quiet diplomatic bombshell into every new passport: a national map printed on the visa pages that traced the contested "nine-dash line" across the South China Sea, swallowing waters and islands also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and India. Neighbours retaliated through the one document every traveller must carry: Vietnam and the Philippines refused to stamp the booklet, instead issuing visas on loose-leaf paper so no Chinese border official could argue the stamp endorsed Beijing's borders. It remains one of the rare cases where a passport's artwork itself became an international territorial dispute.

• Passport map China's 2012 biometric e-passport printed a map showing the disputed South China Sea "nine-dash line," prompting Vietnam and the Philippines to stamp visas on separate loose paper rather than inside the booklet.
• Passport power The Chinese passport was one of the decade's biggest climbers on the Henley Passport Index, leaping from 94th place in 2015 to 64th in 2025 as Beijing struck reciprocal visa-free deals across Europe and beyond.
• One citizenship China recognises no dual nationality at all: a mainland citizen who voluntarily takes a foreign passport automatically loses Chinese nationality under Article 9, along with their hukou household registration and the rights attached to it.
• Descent only Chinese nationality follows strict jus sanguinis (right of blood), so a baby born inside China to foreign parents acquires no citizenship from the soil, while a child of a Chinese parent is Chinese wherever in the world they are born.
• First paper money The world's first paper currency, the jiaozi, appeared among Sichuan merchants around the 10th century and was nationalised by the Song state in the 1020s, putting paper money in Chinese hands roughly six centuries before Sweden or France.
• People's currency The renminbi literally means "people's currency," its yuan unit named for the "round" silver coins of the Qing era and divided into 10 jiao or 100 fen; every banknote in the current series carries the same Mao Zedong portrait.
• Digital cash China became the first major economy to run a live central bank digital currency, the e-CNY, which by late 2025 had processed over 3.4 billion transactions worth around 16.7 trillion yuan.
• Biometric first The e-passport rolled out in May 2012 was the first Chinese identity document ever to store a holder's fingerprints, secured with colour-shifting seals, an animated national emblem and watermarks of all 31 provinces.
• Great migration Each Lunar New Year triggers Chunyun, the largest annual human migration on Earth, with a record 9.5 billion domestic trips projected for the 2026 season as workers return to their registered hometowns.