The Household Registration System (Hukou)

The Household Registration System (Hukou)

Introduction
China, the World’s fastest growing economic country composing of more than 1.3 billion inhabitants. With such a large population, it is necessary to have a well-organized system to manage the country.
Household Registration System or Hukou is the answer. It is one of the basic social management mechanisms in all countries. China manages its population of about 1.3 billion mainly through the household registration mechanism. The Hukou System is simply like a passport in those developed countries like in European Union. Someone who has a passport can go to many other countries without a visa, but restricted in other countries as one is not the citizen of that country. Similar to that, in China every legal citizen has his or her Hukou. A passport presents the nationality of a person, while Hukou presents the living or working place one person belongs to. So people living in the countryside have what’s called rural Hukou, while people living in city have an urban Hukou. Without such registration, Chinese citizens would be able to move everywhere inside China. But due to the existence of Hukou itself, the movement of people from one area to another is somewhat difficult and somehow restricted in many aspects in order to stay in a new place. However, Hukou is still considered as such a vital system to control migration inside China by preventing an excessive migrants or labor forces from rural area into some big cities and has existed in China for decades of years with some appropriate adjustment.
Brief History of Hukou System
During the pre-reform period, the central government formed and pursued a development strategy that mainly focused on the development of the heavy industry, which is the root for China’s rural-urban divide. This strategy aimed at achieving rapid industrialization by pulling out the agricultural surplus for capital expansion in industries and for supporting urban-based subsidies. The main enforcement mechanisms included the Unified Procurement and Unified Sale of agricultural commodities, the People’s Communes, and the Household Registration System (Hukou). Not long after the founding of the People’s Republic, the state acquired agricultural products with lower prices in the commodity markets. When the purchases became increasingly difficult in 1953, the state initiated the Unified Purchase and Unified Sale system with its completion occurring in 1958. Under this system, the government monopolized the whole process of production and procurement of agricultural commodities in rural areas and, at the same time, controlled the distribution of food and other agricultural products through rations in cities. Because this system lowered the cost of living in urban regions, the government had to implement corresponding policies to control the labor movements. At that time, the People’s Communes were already established, which became effective institutions for carrying out the government’s economic as well as administrative plans. Because the control of labor flows was a key link for implementing the development strategy, a formal system of Household Registration System was established in the late 1950s that in effect designated the legal place of residency and work for the entire population.

The Chinese Household Registration System (Hukou)

In 1955, as one of its procedures for setting administrative control, the new Chinese Communist government established the Household Registration System, which is still in place today. All households were registered in the locale where they resided and also were categorized as either agricultural or non-agricultural households. The installation of the hukou system reflected an effort on the part of the government to cope with demographic pressures created by China’s rapid industrialization. After the civil war and two ensuing years of economic rehabilitation (1950-1952), millions of peasants were recruited by growing state industrial enterprises established in urban areas as part of the first Five-Year Plan (1953-1957), and many more moved without restriction into cities to look for urban jobs (Meisner 1999).

To control this rapid influx into cities, the registration system divided the population into agricultural and non-agricultural sectors as a basis both to restrict further rural-to-urban migration and to return rural migrants to the Countryside. Enforcement of the hukou regulations became especially strict in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), which threw the newly established system into chaos, followed by a dramatic increase in industrial growth and urban inflow. The government soon realized that China’s grain-production capacity was unable to sustain such a huge urban population, especially given the decline in agricultural production during the Great Leap Forward. Thus, beginning in 1959 the government expanded and rigorously enforced the hukou system as a tool to control migration. The success of the hukou system in restricting internal migration relied on two other administrative systems, through which rationing was carried out.

On the rural side, the Commune system enabled local governments to combine peasants to the land. All adults had to participate in agricultural production to receive food rations for their households (Parish and Whyte 1978) and migration was generally prohibited except with the permission of the local government. On the urban side, the principal administrative units for most urban residents were the workplace organizations (danwei), which administered most social services for their employees (Bian 1994). Without a work unit, it was very difficult to survive in a city because housing, food, and other social services were unavailable through the market. Moreover, because employment quotas in all urban work units were tightly controlled by the government labor administration, even rural residents willing to risk losing food rations by leaving their home villages would have little chance of getting a job in a city. This tight administrative control on both sides virtually eliminated unauthorized rural-to-urban migration in the pre-reform era. Economic reform during the next two decades relaxed this administrative control (Fan 1999).

The abolition of the commune system, starting in 1978, freed peasants to seek work in the industrial and service sectors. At the same time, both push and pull factors increased the propensity to migrate from the countryside into the cities. First, the introduction of the “family responsibility system,” which made individual families responsible for particular plots and allowed producers to sell on the open market any surplus remaining after paying the grain tax, greatly improved the efficiency of agricultural production, thus creating a large worker surplus in rural areas. Second, erosion of the inflexible danwei-based rationing system in urban areas created social space for rural migrants (Liang and White 1997). To enhance the development of the service sector in cities, the government allowed peasants to enter cities and establish small urban businesses such as shoe-repair shops, barbershops, and restaurants (Li 1993). Further, millions of young peasants were hired in the growing market sector outside the redistributive system. Even some state-owned work units preferred to hire rural peasants because they had no obligation to provide housing and other social benefits for peasant-workers or because the jobs were unattractive to urban workers. By the end of 1990 the urban “floating population” had reached 70 million.

Although geographic mobility and employment change have become relatively easier, the social concomitants of hukou status still persist. No matter how similar their jobs are to those held by urban workers, employees with rural hukou status are still classified as “peasant workers” and thereby are not entitled to the many labor rights and benefits enjoyed by employees with urban hukou (Yang and Guo 1996). In the reform era the hukou system has remained largely in force and still greatly shapes socioeconomic status and life chances.

Reform of the Hukou System (1998-2004)

Though, the social status between the agricultural versus nonagricultural has somehow set out to become less important, geographical determination remains important still. Because of the push from the countryside and the pull to the cities, in the mid-1980s the central government began reforming the system to allow more rural hukou holders to change their residence status if they met certain financial and educational criteria as it was extremely difficult for rural Chinese to survive in cities without an urban hukou since they did not have access to the necessities of life such as food and housing, much of which was centrally controlled and allocated. The hukou system, however, still kept rural-urban migration to a minimum. In 1992, the “blue stamp” hukou policy enabled rich rural residents to essentially purchase urban status through investment in cities. More recently, reform efforts have included simplifying application procedures and easing limitations on migration to towns and small cities.

Reforms of the hukou system in China have intensified in the past years. In 1998, the State Council approved a Ministry of Public Security (MPS) proposal removing some restrictions on internal migration (Zhang 2000). The new measures included allowing those less than 18 years of age to choose to inherit their hukou status from either parent, facilitating hukou conversions for spouses previously separated by hukou restrictions, prioritizing hukou conversions for aged people who depend on their children for care, as well as facilitating the hukou conversion of investors and professionals and their family members (Chan, Kam Wing 2004).
Not only the new measures have been stated, the Hukou System has been computerized by early 2000. This household registration information database was created as part of China’s “Golden Shield” project aimed at improving communication and information sharing among the national police. According to one source, “by the end of 2001, more than thirty thousand police stations had computerized their Hukou files; 1,180 cities and counties had joined regional computer networks for sharing [Hukou information], and 250 cities had joined a single hukou computer network” aiming at instant verification of Hukou files (Wang 2005).

Moreover, the government began to eliminate quotas limiting hukou registrations in small cities and towns. In March 2001, a State Council circular ordered small cities of less than 100,000 inhabitants to grant hukou to residents with fixed jobs and homes beginning in October 2001 (Beijing Review 2004). In August 2003, the MPS approved additional measures aimed at easing travel restrictions, particularly in western areas of China (People’s Daily 2003). These measures included allowing educated people wishing to work in these regions the option of changing their permanent hukou registration to their area of work. The measures also included allowing parents to register their newborn’s birth in either parent’s place of permanent residence.

Regionally, the application of household registration reform policies spread at the national level varies widely among the different provinces and cities, making generalizations impossible. According to Beatriz Carrillo, “liberalization” of the hukou system is more likely in smaller urban areas, whereas the larger urban centers tightly manage their HRS (Chan, Kam Wing 2004). For example, in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, having an urban registration remains essential to secure social security, welfare, education, accommodations and employment prospects.

Despite the regional variations, the qualifications required to obtain urban registration tend to be similar and often consist of having fixed residence and stable employment (usually one year on the job) in an urban area (Young 2002). According to Cai Fang, director of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), state regulations introduced in 2001 made the hukou reform more of a local government responsibility than a national government-based. According to Kam Wing Chan, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, local governments had almost complete control over population management within their jurisdictions. Municipal governments in several large cities did not immediately implement the reform policies introduced by the national government in 1998, and their refusal to do so was tolerated by the national authorities (Young 2002). The high fees associated with obtaining an urban hukou in large cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which are the most attractive to migrants, made access to these cities out of reach for most (Wang 2005).

The reforms introduced by the national government in March 2001 covered “all towns and small cities in Anhui, Guangdong, Hebei, Jiangsu, Shandong, Sichuan, and Zhejiang provinces” (Young 2002). Although these reforms also extended to some parts of larger cities (the peripheries), including Beijing, Chongqing and Shanghai, these cities had placed “significant limits” on eligibility for urban registration (Young 2002). Fuzhou, for example, the capital city of Fujian, relaxed its hukou system in 2002 by eliminating the rural/urban distinction among its local residents and doing away with quotas on the number of people allowed to enter the city. However, the city imposed “access conditions” for obtaining a hukou, consisting of “a lawful residence, occupation and source of income and so on”. On 24 February 2003, Xinhua News Agency reported on reforms taking place in Beijing, where a new policy would allow children of rural mothers born in Beijing after 1 January 2003 to be registered as urban residents. Reforms were also introduced which would allow rural students in the city’s higher vocational and specialized training schools to obtain Beijing hukou (Xinhua 2003).

Nevertheless, during 2003, several provinces and major cities began to speed up local hukou reforms. Beijing, for example, introduced further reforms in the summer of 2003, by issuing a new type of “Hukou” registration called the Beijing Employment and Residence Permit, which would give its holders “rights to housing, education, investment, social and medical insurance and a driver’s license”. In order to be issued such a permit, however, a person must be a residing in Beijing, be employed, have a bachelor’s degree and two years of employment experience.

Recent update on the Hukou System
According to the Chinese law and politics website, Chinese authorities are considering reforms to the hukou system. Proposed reforms would strengthen the system of temporary residence permits, expand the ability of the spouses and elderly parents of urban residents to relocate to China’s cities, and use the criteria of a "fixed, legal place of residence" as the touchstone for determining whether rural migrants can shift their hukou to urban areas. The five main proposals are:
• Strengthening the temporary residence permit system
• Eliminating limits on spouses (of individuals holding hukou registration in urban areas) also shifting their hukou registration to urban areas
• Relaxing limits on elderly parents (of individuals holding hukou registration in urban areas) also shifting their hukou registration to urban areas
• Adopting the criteria of having a "legal and fixed place of residence" as the basic criteria for determining whether migrants can shift their hukou registration to urban areas.
• Implementing a unified registration system
According from the China court website, that proposal called for hukou reform would eliminate distinctions between agricultural and non-agricultural hukou registration, unify the hukou registration system, and use criteria such as possessing "a legal and fixed place of residence" or having "a stable profession or source of income" to determine whether rural residents could shift their hukou registration to urban areas. This proposal has been said to be passed by the Ministry of Public Security to the State Council for consideration.
Conclusion and opinion

Most academics agree that the Chinese government has no intention of abolishing the Household Registration System in the near future (Chan, Kam Wing). While the government recognizes that the household registration system is no longer well-matched with the needs of a modern market economy, it still values it as a means of tracking social growth and ensuring social order. According to Beatriz Carrillo, the hukou system helps the government limit the number of people it is obligated to include in the social security and welfare schemes, both of which function in urban areas.
In my opinion, this system also helps the government prevent huge population flows to the urban area like the East. Of course, because of the country's large population, China's reform of the household registration system has still taken place today. While there are a number of criticizes on how this system discriminates rural people, I do recognize this system as an essential structure that is needed for a high populated country like China. If all restrictions on migration were lifted at the same time, cities, especially large and medium-sized cities, would face severe pressure in terms of public facilities, health care, employment and education. From many sources on this household registration system, China is still actively advancing reform of its system and speeding up the drafting of the Law of Household Registration in order to make the new system more suitable to the management of population movement and to secure the rights of equality and freedom for all Chinese citizens.

Reference

“Beijing Review”. January 2004. “People on the Move. Old Residence Registration System is Being Unified.” <http://www.bjreview.com.cn/200401/viewpoint.htm> [Accessed 30 Dec. 2004]

Bian, Y. 1994. Work and Inequality in Urban China. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Chan, Kam Wing. 2004. “Reform of the Chinese Household Registration System and Rural-Urban Migration in China.” Translated from Chinese into English by the Multilingual Translation Directorate, Translation Bureau, Public Works and Government

Fan, C. C. 1999. “Migration in a Socialist Transitional Economy: Heterogeneity,
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Meisner, M. 1999. Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic. 3rd ed. New York: Free Press.

Parish, W. L., and M. K. Whyte. 1978. “Collective Agricultural Organization.” Pp. 30-43 in Village and Family in Contemporary China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wang, Fei-Ling. 16 February 2005. Correspondence sent to the Research Directorate.
_____. January 2005. “Organizing Through Division and Exclusion: China’s Hukou System”. Stanford University Press.

Wu, Xiaogang and Donald J. Treiman. October 2002. “The Household Registration System and Stratification in China: 1955-1996”. <http://www.ccpr.ucla.edu/ccprwpseries/ccpr_006_02.pdf> [Accessed 6 Dec. 2004]
Xinhua. 24 February 2003. “Looser Residency Policy for Beijing Rural Workers.” (China Internet Information Centre.) <http://www.china.org.cn/english/China/56808.htm> [Accessed 6 Dec. 2004]

Yang, Q., and F. Guo. 1996. “Occupational Attainments of Rural to Urban Temporary
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Zhang, Li. 2000. “Reform of the Hukou System and Rural-Urban Migration in China: The Challenges Challenges Ahead.” <http://mumford.albany.edu/chinanet/conferences/Zhang.doc> [Accessed 20 Dec. 2004]