does that mean if a foreigner, say a pregnant woman from Finland, moves to China and has her child, and that child grows up in China, speaks, reads, and writes Chinese as their first language, has only ever lived in China... does that make them "Chinese?" But your comment here - "You must have Chinese parents who are citizens to claim citizenship." - answers that question.
There's a lot of Chinese-raised foreigners (aka moved to China as a baby and learned Chinese as first language), but legally, they're still considered foreigners. Culturally, they're in a complicated place where they open their mouth and it's obvious they fit into the culture but visually they present as a foreigner. I don't think there's nearly as many cases of foreigners having kids in China at the moment, especially not those of European descent, mostly because China is not an immigration destination for people from Europe, North America, or Oceania due to the disparity in quality of living. The only major example I can think of in terms of immigration is an illegal case: there's a small pocket of illegal immigrants of African descent in Guangdong province and the government doesn't know what to do in their case. Some of them marry citizens and gain citizenship for their kids that way (the parent can only obtain residency status), but a lot just remain as illegal residents.
Is it possible for a person to have no citizenship?
Yup. It's very possible to not have any citizenship if no government is willing to claim the person as theirs. They will basically remain illegal residents with no citizenship benefits. Actually a lot of illegal immigrants in the US have this issue. They aren't recognized as citizens in their country of origin and the US doesn't recognize them as citizens either. This is why "deporting illegal immigrants" is a dead on arrival policy, there's no state to which the illegal immigrants can be deported.
no subject
There's a lot of Chinese-raised foreigners (aka moved to China as a baby and learned Chinese as first language), but legally, they're still considered foreigners. Culturally, they're in a complicated place where they open their mouth and it's obvious they fit into the culture but visually they present as a foreigner. I don't think there's nearly as many cases of foreigners having kids in China at the moment, especially not those of European descent, mostly because China is not an immigration destination for people from Europe, North America, or Oceania due to the disparity in quality of living. The only major example I can think of in terms of immigration is an illegal case: there's a small pocket of illegal immigrants of African descent in Guangdong province and the government doesn't know what to do in their case. Some of them marry citizens and gain citizenship for their kids that way (the parent can only obtain residency status), but a lot just remain as illegal residents.
Yup. It's very possible to not have any citizenship if no government is willing to claim the person as theirs. They will basically remain illegal residents with no citizenship benefits. Actually a lot of illegal immigrants in the US have this issue. They aren't recognized as citizens in their country of origin and the US doesn't recognize them as citizens either. This is why "deporting illegal immigrants" is a dead on arrival policy, there's no state to which the illegal immigrants can be deported.