Chinese nationality
The Qing government created the first Chinese nationality law in 1909, which defined a Chinese national as any person born to a Chinese father. Children born to a Chinese mother only inherited her nationality if the father was stateless or had unknown nationality status. Women who married foreigners lost Chinese nationality if they took the nationality of their husbands. Nationality could be inherited perpetually from Chinese fathers, making it difficult to lose for men. These regulations were enacted in response to a 1907 statute passed in the Netherlands that retroactively treated all Chinese born in the Dutch East Indies as Dutch citizens. "Jus sanguinis" was chosen to define Chinese nationality so that the Qing could counter foreign claims on overseas Chinese populations and maintain the perpetual allegiance of its subjects living abroad through paternal lineage.