In China you are born in and live in a specific region and it is where your family pays taxes and works and where you are entitled to state sponsored benefits like free education and so on…

If you leave that area without proper documentation and authorization then you don’t get the benefits entitled to you by your family’s having worked and paid taxes etc that go toward those things in the new area… In a twisted way its just and fair.. Of course there is also a lot of corruption and people don’t get as much freedom to move about etc as we think they should get coming from our form of government and sit here looking into a different system.

This family left their region and voluntarily left their benefits behind so the father could get a job… Maybe he needed it and had no choice due to his financial situation… but still his daughter does have access to free education… somewhere, and probably she could live with her grandparents and go to school legally.

Again that kind of situation is pretty normal in China too where families are split up for pragmatic reasons… I don’t like that situation and I have friends who are in it but it IS how China’s system works, and this guy knew it or should have before he relocated.