The People’s Republic of China and ordinary electronic passports for state and private purposes were uniformly launched nationwide on May 15, 2012.

Electronic passports of the People’s Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China for official purposes have been issued on a trial basis since July 1, 2011. However, the official issuance time varies from place to place. Most of them started to be issued in the second half of 2012, and the progress was slow until 2013.

1. Introduction to Electronic Ordinary Passport Electronic Ordinary Passport is a new type of document that embeds an electronic chip in the traditional ordinary passport and stores the holder’s basic personal information, facial portrait, and fingerprint information in the chip. . The electronic ordinary passport continues to retain various functions of the existing passport, while using more reliable digital encryption technology, more advanced printing anti-counterfeiting technology and more beautiful theme patterns, which not only ensures the high security of the electronic ordinary passport, but also displays national image.

(1) Specifications of the electronic ordinary passport The specifications of the electronic ordinary passport are 125mm*88mm and have 48 pages. The cover is maroon red. The cover is printed with the national emblem of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese and English inscriptions of the People's Republic of China passport, and the electronic passport logo and other hot stamping contents. Page 2 of the passport is the information page, which contains columns such as the standard photo of the holder, name, gender, nationality, date of birth, place of birth, date of issuance, place of issuance, validity period, issuing authority, and signature of the holder. The bottom of the information page is a machine readable area with standard machine readable codes printed on it. Page 3 is the statement page. Pages 4 to 7 are remarks pages. Pages 8 to 46 are visa pages. Page 47 is the emergency information page. Applicants can fill in the contact information of two relatives and friends here. Page 48 is the precautions page. There is a chip embedded in the three pages of the passport cover, which contains the basic information of the passport holder. The passport number consists of the uppercase English letter E plus 8 Arabic numerals.

(2) The aesthetics of the electronic passport The electronic ordinary passport adopts pattern elements with the theme of "Glorious China", and uses three pattern forms: normal light, fluorescence and watermark to express the theme. Among them, the regular light and fluorescent patterns were designed with regionally representative elements from 31 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the Central Government, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, and were designed through three symbols representing the national image: "Tiananmen", "Great Wall", and "Temple of Heaven". Elements are connected; the watermark pattern chooses the characters of my country’s 56 ethnic groups to connect regional elements from a humanistic perspective. The theme pattern is printed on pages 8 to 46 of the electronic passport. Among them, the representative elements of the national image occupy two pages per picture and adopt a double-page spread design; the representative elements of the region occupy one page per picture and are arranged in the order of administrative divisions. The watermark patterns of ethnic minority characters are located on pages 4 to 46. Each page contains 2 to 3 characters of different ethnic groups. The entire pattern design is magnificent and profound, which not only shows the natural features of our country, but also shows our country’s long-standing history and culture and the spiritual concept of harmony and unity of the Chinese nation.

(3) Security of electronic passports Electronic ordinary passports use high-security smart card chips that comply with relevant ICAO standards, and use asymmetric cryptography with high security strength to protect chip data. The digital anti-counterfeiting performance of the electronic ordinary passport is ensured. In terms of physical anti-counterfeiting, the electronic ordinary passport adopts a number of anti-counterfeiting technologies such as special-shaped color separation, glossy ink, laser perforation, and high-resolution holography, which enhances the physical anti-counterfeiting level of the electronic ordinary passport. Through the above measures, we can effectively prevent the occurrence of forgery and alteration of passports and protect the legitimate rights and interests of passport holders.