Although the first-generation identity cards were issued in 1984, utilizing dot-matrix printing and lamination for anti-counterfeiting, printing houses in the Mainland during the 1980s were still predominantly state-run, and universal adoption of ID cards would not happen until around 1990.
Consequently, at this time, even police officers rarely encountered counterfeit ID cards.
Yet throughout the entire decade of the nineties, a multitude of vicious murderers escaped the net of the law by forging ID cards, then using reported-lost photocopies to fraudulently obtain new, genuine ID cards.
Chapter 350