An 18-year-old woman in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, has been told that she can't apply for university because she has never had the official household registration record, Yangtze Evening Post reported on Monday.

Police and local government officials have told her that her problem stems from having been illegally adopted, and that nothing can be done to correct the situation, according to the report.

The woman is named Miao Dan, but legally speaking, Miao Dan does not exist.

In 1995, having been abandoned by her biological parents, she was adopted by a disabled and unmarried farmer named Miao Jiaming. He did not go through the official adoption procedures and so was not able to provide his adopted daughter with an official household registration record, or hukou.

A hukou is a record in the system of household registration required by law in China. A household registration record officially identifies a person as a resident of an area.

When Miao Dan decided to take part in next year's university entrance exam, she found that she was unable to register without hukou.

Local police said that Miao Dan could not have a hukou as she had not been officially adopted.

The civil affairs bureau, meanwhile, pointed out that the law on adoption requires that any unmarried man who seeks to adopt a female child must be at least 40 years old than the child. Since Miao Jiaming did not meet this criterion, he was not eligible for the role of adoptive father.