JayAtl
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Beijing (CNN) -- Twenty-year-old Li Xue has a passion for learning but has never spent a day at school.
The only way she could study was by borrowing books with her elder sister's library card and begging her for lessons.
As a second child born under the strictures of China's one-child policy, she was not entitled to a state education.
Nor did she have access to subsidized health care that most city dwellers enjoy. She used her mother's and sister's identity cards to buy medicine when she fell ill.
"She kept asking me why she can't go to school, why she can't while all others do, and I had no idea how to respond her except repeating that she is a second child," her mother Bai Xiuling, a former factory worker, told CNN from her modest bare-brick home.
Li says she was not jealous of her 28-year-old sister, but grateful because she tutored her in her spare time.
"I want to learn as much as she does but it's different because she can go to school and I cannot."
Her mother fell unexpectedly pregnant in 1993. Despite the risks, she went ahead with the pregnancy. A childhood bout of polio damaged her leg and she wanted to have another child to take care of her in old age.
China's family planning laws require most families living in urban areas to have one child. The policy is looser in rural areas and can also be skirted by those who can afford to pay the eye-watering fines.
But Li's parents could not pay the 5,000 yuan ($820) penalty and authorities denied Li her household registration documents, or "hukou," which entitle city residents to subsidized health, housing and education.
Reform?
The one-child policy, though applauded by many for slowing down China's population growth, has been widely criticized for resulting inforced abortions and hefty fines that are sometimes used to enforce it.
Some critics say the law hurts China's elderly, who typically rely on their children for support in old age, and even constrains economic growth as the working age population begins to decline.
The girl with no identity: Being a second child in China - CNN.com
This family is going to be thrown in Jail - how dare they speak ill of the CCP
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