Can a name be illegal?

• Position: CHINA - Brief article

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Sixty million people out of China's population of 1.3 billion may have to change their names because they're not on the government's official list. When the government ordered new digital identity cards that art Chinese must carry, the computers were programmed to recognize only 32,000 of 55,000 Chinese characters. Names with other characters won't be approved. When Ma Cheng, whose family name, Ma, is very common, tried to renew her card, a Beijing official objected to her given name, Cheng...