China issued a regulation on Wednesday granting its servicemen and armed police civilian identity cards, aiming to help them handle personal affairs such as banking and car, house and insurance purchases.

"The regulation signifies an ending of civilian identity card absence in Chinese army and armed police forces," a spokesman of a special military office in charge of the matter told Xinhua.

The new regulation will take effect on Jan. 1 2008.

"Due to the change of army units, posts and military rankings, soldiers and officers have to constantly changes their military cards, which made it difficult in dealing with civilian cases," the spokesman said.

According to the regulation, servicemen and armed police were going to have both civilian and military identity cards from the start of next year.

The civilian identity cards shall be used in private and civilian matters that requires the identification of their citizenship, while the military identity cards shall be used in occasions that need to identify their military identities, the spokesman said.

The legal rights of servicemen as "ordinary citizens" would be better protected, he said, stressing "putting the military population under the state umbrella would strengthen national demographic management".

The card application must be filed by soldiers or offices with the police authorities of their stationed counties via military units above the regiment level, the regulation said, adding those who had already had civilian cards before enlisted would not need to apply for new ones if the original were still valid.

It also threatened penalties against forgery, cheating, swindling and leasing in the application and use of identity cards by servicemen or armed police, and "leakage of state secret and personal information" in the issuance and management of such cards.

China began a residential identity card system in 1985 which ruled that servicemen and armed police had separate military or armed police cards instead of civilian identity cards.

A Law on Resident Identity Cards which came into effect in 2004 for the first time enlarged the card issuance scope to servicemen and armed police.

The law says Chinese citizens above 16 all have identity cards which are a citizen's "sole and inalterable permanent code". The 18-digit identity code includes 6 numerals representing the holder's birth place, 8 for date of birth, and another 4 for sex and differentiation.

(Xinhua News Agency November 1, 2007)