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China's Health Ministry's proposed guidelines stipulate that candidates for gender reassignment surgery must be unmarried persons over the age of 20 and who are obtain a commitment by local police to issue a new ID card after the operation. In additional, the candidate must not have a criminal record. Other conditions include having lived publicly as the other gender for more than two years, desired a sex change for at least five years, and more than one year of psychotherapy.

Last year, China Daily published a photograph of a transexual woman with the caption: "In 1983, Zhang Kesha, the first transsexual person in China."

The regulation also set out standards for hospitals and doctors eligible to perform the operations including having an ethics committee to evaluate applications and a plastic surgery department that has a decade of experience. Surgeons must have more than five years of experience in transsexual operations.

According to official news agency Xinhua, there are an estimated 1,000 transsexuals in China. The English-language China Daily, however, cites experts who put the number of sex changes in China nearly 2,000 Chinese to date, with another 100,000 to 400,000 considering the surgery.

Jin Xing, China's first celebrity transsexual had her operation in 1995 which was widely publicised. The well known dancer chronicled her journey from coming out as a gay man to realising that she’s transexual in her memoir, Shanghai Tango.

Related articles:
- Sex change surgery guidelines drafted (China Daily, Jun 17, 2009)
- China to regulate transsexual operations (China Daily, Jun 17, 2009)
- China posts regulation for prospective sex change patients (Xinhua, Jun 16, 2009)
- First transsexual person (China Daily, Oct 28, 2008)
- Tianjin transsexual gets new Chinese ID card as a woman (Xinhua, Apr 16, 2008)