[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CHINA'S HOUSEHOLD REGISTRATION (HUKOU) SYSTEM: DISCRIMINATION AND
REFORMS
=======================================================================
ROUNDTABLE
before the
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 2, 2005
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
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CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Senate House
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska, Chairman JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa, Co-Chairman
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas DAVID DREIER, California
GORDON SMITH, Oregon FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia
JIM DeMINT, South Carolina JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
MEL MARTINEZ, Florida ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
MAX BAUCUS, Montana SANDER LEVIN, Michigan
CARL LEVIN, Michigan MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
STEVEN J. LAW, Department of Labor
PAULA DOBRIANSKY, Department of State
David Dorman, Staff Director (Chairman)
John Foarde, Staff Director (Co-Chairman)
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS
Wang, Fei-Ling, professor, the Sam Nunn School of International
Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA.......... 2
Froissart, Chloe, Center for International Studies and Research,
Paris, France; Center for Research on Contemporary China, Hong
Kong, China.................................................... 05
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Wang, Fei-Ling................................................... 28
Froissart, Chloe................................................. 35
CHINA'S HOUSEHOLD REGISTRATION (HUKOU) SYSTEM: DISCRIMINATION AND
REFORMS
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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2005
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The roundtable convened, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in
room 2168, Rayburn House Office Building, David Dorman (Senate
Staff Director) presiding.
Also present: John Foarde, House Staff Director; William A.
Farris, Carl Minzner, and Keith Hand, Senior Counsels;
Katherine Palmer Kaup, Special Advisor on Minority
Nationalities Affairs; and Laura Mitchell, Senior Research
Associate.
Mr. Dorman. Well, let's get started. First of all, on
behalf of our chairman, Senator Chuck Hagel, and co-chairman,
Representative Jim Leach, I would like to welcome our two
distinguished panelists today to this Commission roundtable to
discuss the hukou system in China.
Before we proceed, I would like to make a short statement.
After the statement, I will introduce each of our witnesses,
invite each to deliver a 10-minute statement in turn, and then
we will move into a procedure where each person on the dais has
five minutes to ask a question and hear an answer from the
witnesses.
We will continue asking questions and hearing answers until
we reach 3:30, or we run out of questions. We have found that
we do not really have much trouble filling 90 minutes, though,
so I think we will be all right.
China's hukou system has imposed strict limits on ordinary
Chinese citizens changing their permanent place of residence
since it was instituted in the 1950s. Beginning with the reform
period in the late 1970s and accelerating through the late
1990s, national and local authorities relaxed restrictions on
obtaining urban residence permits.
While these moves are a step forward, recent reforms often
contain high income and strict housing requirements that work
against rural migrants who seek to move to China's cities.
Migrants who do not meet these requirements usually cannot
obtain public services, such as health care and schooling for
their children, on an equal basis with other residents.
The Commission encourages the Chinese Government to
continue hukou reforms, building on positive steps already
taken, by focusing on measures that would continue to
liberalize urban hukou requirements, but emphasize non-
discriminatory criteria and steadily eliminate current rules
that link hukou status to public services.
I would like to note that Carl Minzner, a Senior Counsel on
the Commission, has been monitoring and reporting on this issue
for about two years now. It is an issue of great importance--I
do not need to tell either of our witnesses that--both in terms
of Chinese socioeconomic development in general and in terms of
its impact on the lives of individual Chinese citizens.
We are very pleased that the two of you have agreed to
participate in this roundtable today. This is an
extraordinarily complex system, often difficult for Americans
to understand, and we hope that this roundtable will help this
Commission, and Congress, better understand the impact of the
hukou system on human rights and rule of law development in
China.
First, I would like to introduce Professor Fei-Ling Wang.
Professor Wang is from the Sam Nunn School of International
Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
Professor Wang teaches international political economy, world
politics, and East Asian and Chinese studies. He has published
four books, two co-edited volumes, and over 50 journal
articles, book chapters, and monographs in five languages. His
most recent book is ``Organizing Through Division and
Exclusion: China's Hukou System,'' published by Stanford
University Press in 2005. He holds a Ph.D. from the University
of Pennsylvania. He has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at
West Point, guest-lectured at 15 other universities in several
countries, and held visiting and adjunct positions in four
universities in China, Japan, and Singapore. He has appeared on
many news media programs and has had numerous grants including,
most recently, a Lectureship from the Fulbright Commission and
an International Affairs Fellowship from the Council on Foreign
Relations, a very distinguished panelist.
Thank you for coming today, Mr. Wang. You have 10 minutes
to make a statement.
STATEMENT OF FEI-LING WANG, PROFESSOR, THE SAM NUNN SCHOOL OF
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,
ATLANTA, GA
Mr. Wang. Thank you. It is my pleasure to be here to appear
before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China today to
discuss China's hukou system. I want to thank Mr. Minzner and
others for making this possible.
I have prepared a written statement with the title of:
China's Hukou System: A General Survey. So what I would like to
do here is to use a few minutes to highlight some of the main
points in that statement and to make some additional comments
on implications of the hukou system, and to propose some
personal thoughts on what can be done about this system. Then I
will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Let me first emphasize that there are few other
institutions more important than the hukou in defining and
conditioning politics, social life, and economic development of
the People's Republic of China [PRC]. The hukou system can be
traced back to the fifth century B.C. at least, during the
Warring States period. It was an important part of the Chinese
imperial political system for more than 2,000 years.
Both the Republic of China [ROC] and the PRC established a
national hukou system. However, the system achieved an
unprecedented level of uniformity, extensiveness,
effectiveness, and rigidity since the 1950s in the PRC.
Currently, this Chinese institution continues three crucial
functions. It continues a politically determined resource
allocation that clearly favors Chinese urban centers and
discriminates against the rest of the country; it continues to
regulate China's internal migration to exclude the majority of
the population; finally, it continues to be a major pillar
supporting the
Chinese Communist Party's [CCP] one-party regime through a
tight control of the Chinese people, especially through the so-
called management of ``the targeted people.''
There have been noticeable reforms and changes of the
system in the past two decades, as the Chinese reform has
unleashed the forces of a market economy and population
movement. Its resource allocation function has been
considerably reduced, as the heavily subsidized urban rations
have subsided greatly.
The control of internal migration is now reformed, relaxed,
and localized, giving rise to increased mobility of the
population. Some Chinese--mainly the rich, the powerful, and
the talented or educated--have now achieved quasi-national
mobility under various changes in the hukou system. Yet, the
hukou system still regulates internal migration and its
governing principles of migration regulation remain
fundamentally unchanged. Freedom of movement is still an ideal
for a majority of the Chinese people.
The hukou system's social control function, through the
management of the so-called ``targeted people,'' however,
remains highly centralized, rigid, and forceful. The changes in
this area so far are mainly technical and marginal. There are
actually efforts to enhance this role of the system in the
2000s.
Since the 1980s, the PRC has largely completed a national
computerization of the hukou system. In most police stations,
now people's hukou files can be checked and used by the police
with computers almost instantaneously. All hotels with 50 beds
or more are now required to transmit guest information and
their ID photos immediately to local police stations.
The new leadership of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao since 2003
has shown signs of recognizing the negatives of the hukou
system as a political liability. However, the reform of the
hukou system
remains very much unaccomplished by mid-2005.
What to do about it? The hukou system has a complex role in
China. The system facilitates a rapid, but very uneven,
economic growth, creates significant social and regional
disparities and injustice, stabilizes the PRC's socio-political
order, and generates powerful tensions in the areas of human
rights, equity of citizenship, and simple ethics.
At a time when there is a widely shared belief in the rise
of China to be a world-class power, the United States and the
international community need to pay more attention to the
internal structure and dynamics of the PRC. The hukou system is
clearly one of those key institutions there that deserve our
attention.
To advocate, help, and facilitate the reform of the hukou
system will help the advancement of human and civil rights for
the majority of the Chinese people. It will also help to
construct more internal constraints to ensure that China's rise
will result in a democratic, stable, and free society that can
be more likely to live in peace with the rest of the world.
As I tried to outline in my written statement, the hukou
system performs a host of crucial functions to Chinese economic
development and socio-political stability. Therefore, the
reform of the system is both highly difficult and extremely
consequential. Ultimately, it is the job of the Chinese people
to decide how, and how much, reform of the hukou system can be
undertaken and accomplished. External help, however, especially
American, is important.
In addition to the general objectives of promoting more
balanced market-oriented economic development, establishing
social safety nets, striving for a rule of law and more
transparent governance, and fair and equitable citizen rights
for all in China, I would like to highlight just three concrete
things that the Chinese Government can do to mitigate the
negative consequences of the hukou system.
First, a massive reallocation of resources is necessary,
especially to make new investments in education, health care,
and infrastructure in areas and regions outside of major urban
centers. In many other countries such as Japan, this has
happened because of a political democracy, the vote-chasing by
national politicians. In the PRC, in the absence of a
democracy, persuading and pressuring the central government on
the grounds of economic and ethical rationales remain, so far,
the only way.
Second, a more transparent hukou system in general and the
so-called ``targeted people'' management, in particular, should
be encouraged and demanded. Depoliticizing the hukou system and
gradual phasing out of discrimination against selected groups
of people should be included in the U.S.-China dialogues on
human rights and political reform.
Third, a uniform national college admission policy should
be
implemented to ensure fairness in one of the very few open and
competitive processes for social mobility in China. The strong
discrimination in education opportunities based on the hukou
system should be addressed seriously and effectively.
China cannot become a world-class economic power without
social and horizontal mobility and the freedom of population
movement to ensure creativity and innovation. China cannot be
peaceful and stable with some regions of it ranked at the level
of Greece and Singapore, while other regions are ranked with
Haiti and the Sudan. China's rise is unlikely to be welcomed
when it systematically discriminates and excludes a majority of
its own people.
In conclusion, I believe that the PRC's hukou system now
poses serious ethical, legal, and international questions that
demand creative and effective solutions. The hukou system
relies heavily on the political power of the CCP to continue,
yet it is also highly crucial to the stability and continuation
of the CCP political system. Ultimately, the fate of the hukou
system will reflect and determine the fate of the current PRC's
socio-political order and China's chance of realizing its
enormous economic potential.
I want to thank you again for the opportunity to share my
understanding and thinking about China's hukou system today. I
now look forward to your questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wang appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Dorman. Professor Wang, thank you for a very
interesting and informative statement. I now have no doubt we
will be able to fill 90 minutes with questions.
I would like to introduce our next distinguished panelist.
Chloe Froissart is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of
Political Science of Paris, which is affiliated with the Center
for International Studies and Research in Paris. She is also a
research fellow at the French Center for Research on
Contemporary China in Hong Kong. Ms. Froissart is an expert on
Chinese political issues, with particular focus on internal
migration, the development of civil society and NGOs in China,
as well as the history of political ideas. Her dissertation
examines the development of social movements among migrant
workers and the citizenship of migrant workers in China,
namely, their evolving relationship with labor laws, access to
education, and social security. Her publications include a
translation of the Tiananmen Papers into French, and ``The
Hazards of the Right to An Education: A Study of the Schooling
of Migrant Children in Chengdu'' in Chinese Perspectives. She
has also worked as a consultant for the UNESCO program, Urban
Poverty Alleviation Among Young Migrants in China, and has
undertaken voluntary work for Human Rights in China, the United
Nations Human Rights Commission, and the French NGO, Solidarity
China. She has been regularly interviewed about Chinese issues
by French and international media.
Ms. Froissart, thank you very much for attending. You have
10 minutes for an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF CHLOE FROISSART, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
AND RESEARCH, PARIS, FRANCE; CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON
CONTEMPORARY CHINA, HONG KONG, CHINA
Ms. Froissart. Thank you very much. I would like to begin
today by expressing my sincere thanks to the Members of the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China for the invitation.
I am especially grateful to Carl Minzner for the help in
arranging my visit.
I would like to take the example of migrant children's
access to education to illustrate the institutional exclusion
created by the hukou system, as described by Professor Wang. My
presentation will mainly draw on the field work I have been
carrying out for four years in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan
province.
I will first recall the impact of the hukou system on
migrant children's access to education as it appeared at the
beginning of the century, and is still prevalent now. But as
education is a determining factor in a country's development
and involves individuals' rights as much as state interests,
there has been room for many recent improvements. I will thus
give an overview of these developments, as well as the forces
at stake in the evolution process, and I will finally endeavor
to weigh the impact of the reforms.
Let us begin with the impact of the hukou system on migrant
children's access to education. Despite the fact that China
recognized in its Constitution the right of every citizen to
receive an education, the hukou system still prevails over the
legislation and prevents migrant workers' children from
receiving a proper education. According to the system, local
governments guarantee the education of children only for their
own constituents, allocating resources according to the number
of permanent residents. Migrant children were completely
excluded from the urban education system until 1998, when they
gained the right to enroll temporarily in urban schools on the
condition of being registered with a host of administrative
organs and paying ``Temporary Enrollment Taxes'' that can reach
several thousand yuan a year. As the vast majority of the
migrants are illegal immigrants who cannot afford such high
schooling fees, private schools sprang up in response to the
needs of these children in the major urban centers in the mid-
1990s.
But due to very low enrollment fees, pupils had to put up
with deplorable sanitary, security, and teaching conditions.
Most of these substandard schools have no legal status and they
cannot award certificates for courses completed. They are also
frequently banned and demolished without the authorities
worrying about placing the children in other schools.
These problems triggered a public outcry, supported by
scholars, journalists, and also some political figures and
organizations. Chinese authorities were particularly receptive
to this public outcry because of the rising number of migrant
children in the cities. There are now an estimated 7 million,
up from 2 to 3 million in 1996. This large increase explains
the evolution of the central government's policy.
We can distinguish three historical steps. First, from 1998
to 2002, the Chinese state acknowledged the problem of migrant
children's schooling and opened the doors of public schools to
them, but set very high administrative and economic conditions
on their enrollment. The second step began in January 2003,
when urban governments were held responsible for providing
compulsory education to school-aged migrant children, mainly by
accommodating them in public schools. Urban governments were
also required to support private schools by helping them to
improve their material and teaching conditions instead of
eliminating them. Finally, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao put
migrant children's access to education on the top of the agenda
of the NPC annual session in March 2004. One of the most
important decisions of this session was to announce the
suppression of temporary enrollment fees in September 2004.
I will now look at how the central policy is enforced at
the local level, by taking the case of Chengdu municipality.
Chengdu municipality followed quite well the central guidelines
and this is due to the favorable political climate in the
Sichuan capital. I will leave the details at this point for the
discussion period. There are always discrepancies between
general and ideal principles devised by the central government
and local implementation of these principles. As we will see,
new public policies in China do not aim to accommodate all the
children equally. As the fault line between urban and migrant
children is still maintained, a new tiered management of
different kinds of migrant children also appeared.
I will consider how Chengdu municipality implemented the
three central government guidelines of enrolling migrant
children in public schools, suppressing temporary enrollment
fees, and enhancing the management of private schools.
Regarding enrollment of children in state schools, in December
2003, the Chengdu government announced that a public school for
migrant children would be opened in each of the five urban
districts within two years, and that the municipality will
invest a great amount of money to finance these schools. In
fact, however, public schools were opened in only two
districts, where there were high concentrations of migrant
children.
Thanks to public investments, enrollment fees in these
schools are very low, ranging from 300 to 500 yuan a semester.
Teachers are transferred from urban public schools and teaching
and security conditions meet urban standards, but material
conditions are of a lower standard than the ones in the schools
for urban children. Very few children can enroll in these
schools, because current enrollment is subject to the condition
of having three certificates, namely, hukou booklets, temporary
residence permits, and a work contract for one of the parents.
A tax bill is also sometimes
required.
What about the suppression of temporary enrollment fees?
Beginning in September 2004, Chengdu municipality exempted some
children from paying temporary enrollment fees, but under very
stringent conditions. The three documents I've just mentioned
are required, and the parents have to be registered with the
Labor and Social Security Administration, which means that they
have to contribute to social security. They also have to pay
taxes. These conditions are often too difficult for migrant
workers. That is why this policy, in fact, benefited white-
collar workers from other cities, and the wealthier and more
stable among the migrant elite.
Because public education still remains beyond the reach of
migrant children, the vast majority of them are enrolled in
private schools that number 70 now, up from 10 two years ago.
In September 2004, the Chengdu government announced that it
would support these schools, but in fact very few were
legalized. At the beginning of 2004, only five schools had a
permit, and there are now fewer than 10. A good indicator of
the lack of public commitment toward these schools is that
Chengdu municipality has still not issued directives about to
which government office private schools for migrant children
should apply to obtain permits.
I will now try to assess the impact of the reform and its
limits. Public policies that favor migrant children's access to
education do not eradicate the impact of the hukou system, but
enable a more flexible management of this system. This policy,
first, benefits the children of the wealthier, most stable, and
legally registered ``outsiders.'' Chinese rural migrants are
treated in their own country in a way similar to how foreign
immigrants in the United States are treated--they can obtain a
``green card'' according to their merits. Public policies in
favor of migrant children's schooling thus function as a tool
to filter this population and control urbanization by
deliberately excluding the poorest and transients.
Another noteworthy consequence of this reform is that it
creates a tiered management of the migrant population. We can
now distinguish five categories of children with different
access to education: (1) those who are integrated in urban
schools because their parents can afford to pay the Temporary
Enrollment Fees; (2) those who are integrated in urban schools
because they were exempted from paying these fees; and (3)
those who are enrolled in substandard public schools; (4) those
who are enrolled in licensed private schools; and (5) the vast
majority, those who are enrolled in illegal, substandard
private schools. These are children of poor illegal immigrants
and pay a higher schooling fee and do not receive a proper
education.
This typology clearly illustrates one of the key points
made by Professor Wang in his book: institutionalized
discrimination anchored in the hukou system remains while now
being coupled with discrimination between the haves and the
have-nots.
So a lot of progress has been made in only two years, and
more children who are not urban residents can now receive an
education. However, the issue is still exposed to institutional
blockages and will not be solved without both political and
administrative reforms, namely the abolition of the hukou
system, followed by corresponding taxation and institutional
reforms.
So given its actual administrative system and limited
financial resources, the Chinese Government must take the
following practical steps to address the discriminatory
treatment faced by migrant children: First, to allow the
existence of private schools for migrant children and subject
them to state monitoring in order to help them meet the same
standards of those available in state schools, and to prevent
them from becoming mercantile. Second, to recentralize
education expenditures in addition to substantially increasing
resources for education.
I would like to finish with a special warning. One of the
reasons stated by authorities for putting migrant children into
special classes or ``simplified schools,'' which are generally
of lower quality, is that the children have not achieved the
same academic standard of their urban counterparts. Such a
reason should not be used as a means to discriminate against
migrant children. These special schools or classes sometimes
are a way to adapt teaching to the needs of the students;
however, they also continue segregation against them and
encourage further popular discrimination.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Froissart appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you.
I will begin the questioning and then invite each of the
staff in turn to join the questioning. Each of us will have
five minutes to ask a question and hear an answer. We will
continue asking questions and hearing answers until we run out
of time or run out of questions. Again, thank you both for very
interesting and useful testimony.
I wonder if I could pose a question to both of you
regarding the hukou reform process itself. Both of you have
described a series of reforms over the past 10 years, or
perhaps longer than that. To what extent is the discriminatory
treatment against migrants, which you have described to us in
your opening statements, an unintended outcome of hukou reform?
Where does the government, at the central and local levels,
stand on this? Is it your view that continuing reform will
improve the treatment of migrants, or were these reforms
designed to discriminate against migrants? One problem for many
of us in understanding the hukou system is that it is sometimes
unclear whether the reform policy outcomes were intentional.
Could both of you address this question, please? Thank you.
Ms. Froissart. Some of the reforms intentionally create a
tiered management of the population. For example, in Beijing
and other big cities, you have a list of jobs that migrant
workers cannot do. In the capital, migrants are listed into
different types--A, B, C. Each category corresponds to a
certain kind of permit that lets you have access to certain
kinds of jobs and to certain kinds of public services. This is
obviously a deliberate way of implementing a tiered management
of the population.
But for other public policies such as the reform in
education, and the reform of social security, I do not think
that the main objective of the Chinese Government was to create
different kinds of stages. It is a consequence of these
policies, but I do not think it was the main aim of the Chinese
authorities. What is certain is that the Chinese authorities
tried to find a way to spend the least possible amount of money
and to accommodate the people that they want to see in the
cities, the talented, the educated, and the wealthiest people.
They designed public policies according to this aim.
Diversification of the stages among the social category of the
migrant people is a subsequent consequence of these policies.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you. Professor Wang.
Mr. Wang. This actually is a very key question to allow us
to try to understand what is going on in China in terms of
reform. My understanding is that the reform process of the
hukou system, similar to the overall reform process of China's
economy in the past two and a half decades, is a combination of
intended policies and unintended consequences by spontaneous
activities or various actions of individuals in China.
The Chinese Government clearly intends to maintain the
hukou system. I do not see any intention at all to abolish it,
or even weaken it. But the unintended consequences of market-
oriented economic reform have built up so much pressure that
lots of changes have been forced on the hukou system. In that
sense, much of the reform of the hukou system is a response, a
reaction by the government to what has happened in the field
rather than a designed, clear policy.
The latest round of reform that was started in 2001 is
called ``deep reform.'' That was designed, indeed, by the
government, but clearly as a response to what is happening in
the Chinese political economy. The consequence of the reform
has been mixed, unfortunately, disadvantaging those who are
discriminated against, those who are excluded. In other words,
the life chances of those who were discriminated against have
not really improved significantly under the reform of the hukou
system, not necessarily because the hukou reform hurt them
more, but because there are new things that are also happening
at the same time.
There are two things I want to mention. One is advancement
of the market system and the importance of money in China that
makes people's livelihood much more dependent upon the material
means they have. The new market system, plus the hukou system,
make the poor, and also the excluded, at the same time, become
synonymous. In other words, being poor and being excluded
becomes synonymous: if you are excluded, you are also poor; if
you are poor, you are also excluded.
Second, the reform of the Chinese economy in the past two
and a half decades has led to the general decay of the social
welfare system. The social security network is gone. The public
health care system under Mao Zedong, which was rudimentary,
elementary, but nonetheless quite widespread, now is largely
gone. So, therefore, those excluded people are having an even
harder time getting by, especially in terms of meeting some
basic needs such as health care and education.
So it is a combination of various factors, but I would not
say right now that hukou reform has fundamentally changed the
life chances of the excluded.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you.
I would like to pass the microphone now to my colleague,
John Foarde, who is Staff Director for our co-chairman,
Representative Jim Leach.
John.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you, Dave. Thanks to both of our
panelists for coming such a long way to share your expertise
with us.
I know that you know, because you watch the news, that
Americans are riveted by the calamity that has just hit the
southern United States, and particularly the city of New
Orleans. As I was reading your statement and thinking about
these issues, I thought that we are in the process of moving a
very large number of people from the affected areas to
temporary or permanent homes elsewhere. Americans just
understand that moving somewhere else in the United States is
natural, that being able to pick up and go elsewhere is your
right, but it is also relatively easy. If you should decide to
establish a new residence somewhere else for tax purposes or
for other purposes, there are certain procedures that you have
to follow for the government, but you do not carry around a
little residence permit book, and your ability to get social
services, to have your children educated, by and large, does
not depend on having household registration. So this American
experience made me wonder, what happens in China and how does
the hukou system come into play when there are natural
disasters that require the evacuation of many dozens, many
hundreds, or even many thousands, of people?
Is it possible, for example, under the hukou system as it
exists today, for people to change their residence if they have
been moved because of a natural disaster, or do people who have
to move, refugees, in that sense, or evacuees, have the same
sorts of difficulties that economic migrants have in China? If
either of you have views, I would love to hear them. Thank you.
Mr. Wang. All right. Let me take the first crack at this. I
think there are two kinds of movement of population in China
under the hukou system. The one kind is the one that is
authorized by the government, approved by the government, or
sometimes ordered by government. That kind of relocation has
happened all the time during the history of the PRC, since the
1950s.
The ``Third Front'' strategy, the ``send-down'' campaigns,
and the reallocation population in case of huge projects, such
as the Three Gorges Dam, and also the relocated refugees as a
result of disasters. That is accommodated by the hukou system.
The government just reassigns you to a different location.
The other kind is an unapproved, spontaneous kind of
migration by the people themselves. In this case, if you do not
get permission, and you do not have authorization, you are
considered illegal and you will be always treated as, at best,
a temporary resident in a new place that you are in right now.
By being categorized as a temporary resident, you do not have
the full membership of a local resident, you do not have full
access to local social services, education, health care, and
job opportunities. As has been mentioned by Ms. Froissart, in
some cities, certain jobs are simply declared not available to
outsiders. So this kind of unauthorized migration,
unfortunately for the Chinese Government, is taking place on a
massive scale right now. It is estimated to be in the
neighborhood of over 100 million people that are unauthorized,
moving around. Some have lived in a different city for two
decades, and yet still are considered a temporary resident, at
best. Some simply are illegals. Those illegals, of course, are
subject to harassment and repatriation by police. Only
recently, starting in 2004, they started to change and relax
the Repatriation Law a little bit.
So now if you are not causing any trouble in major cities,
you can hang around for a while without papers. But if you
cause any trouble, like begging or harassing tourists,
whatever, you are still subject to repatriation, or what they
call a ``Helping Hand'' from the state for those ``blind
migrants,'' as they say.
In terms of disasters, I would argue, actually, the hukou
has really worked in many ways to allow for a fairly orderly
relocation of refugees and the people who are migrating. For
example, over a million people in the Three Gorges area have
been relocated all over the country. Many of them have been
sent as far away as Xinjiang province, a far away place, to
become permanent residents in that area so as to make a place
for the big reservoir that is almost finished right now.
So the hukou system is a very useful, functional, and
administrative tool, but it fundamentally hinders spontaneous
migration by the Chinese people.
Mr. Foarde. Ms. Froissart, if you have a comment, fine. If
not, we can go on.
Ms. Froissart. About management of disasters, I think
Professor Wang said everything.
Mr. Dorman. I would like to turn the questioning over to
Carl Minzner, who is a Senior Counsel on the Commission. Again,
thanks to Carl for organizing this roundtable.
Mr. Minzner. Thank you, both, to Fei-Ling and to Chloe for
coming so far to participate in our roundtable.
Let me ask you a question related to an observation both of
you made, that over the past 20 years or so, economic
privatization has weakened many of the core aspects of the
hukou system. In the 1960s and 1970s, hukou registration was
linked to food rations. Of course, when it is linked to food
rations, you really do not have that much opportunity to move.
Nowadays, economic privatization has removed many of the links
between hukou identification and allocation of resources,
although not yet services. Is it plausible, as we are looking
forward, to think that the importance of the hukou system will
simply be eroded by economic development? Is it possible that,
in the field of education, or in other fields, that as China
moves toward a more market-based system, the hukou system just
will not be that important? To phrase the question a little
more broadly, why should we be concerned about the hukou system
on a long-term basis?
Ms. Froissart. It is true that economic privatization
eroded the hukou system. Market forces now allocate some goods
like food or accommodation that were previously
administratively allocated. This enabled people to move more
freely.
The introduction of a market economy also created an appeal
in urban areas for migrant workers, and that is why migration
is now tolerated. However, there is still no free movement in
China because of the high social and economic costs that
migrating implies.
As urban public services are becoming privatized, there is
an equalization of treatment between migrants and urban
dwellers concerning their social rights. The difference of
treatment between the wealthiest migrants coming from other
cities and the urban elite is no longer so obvious as both are
more likely to send their children to private schools or to
subscribe to private insurance schemes that they deem of better
quality than state schools or public social security. Hence,
few rich migrants still care about obtaining an urban hukou.
But discrimination between urban dwellers and migrants is more
striking concerning poor people, as the Chinese state still
pays for a minimum social insurance net to support unemployed,
handicapped, or poor urban dwellers and from which migrants are
excluded.
I would like to make clear, it is very important, that a
market economy does not necessarily lead to the development of
citizenship, and economic privatization alone is not a
sufficient force to replace a residency system with a
citizenship system. It needs both bold administrative and
political reforms.
On the contrary, the development of a market economy, as I
tried to illustrate in my presentation, leads to
diversification of the stages among citizens. So we are going
toward a development that is contrary to the principle that
every citizen should have the same rights and same duties.
Why should we care about this issue? Because the situation
is ethically worrying and puts China in contravention of the
international covenants that it has signed, such as the United
Nations Convention on The Rights of the Child or the
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights, for example. We should also care about this issue
because it can potentially generate social instability and
economic blockages.
The deepening of market-oriented reforms has an impact on
people's mobility. When people move, they are supposed to have
personal rights, which implies that those rights are not linked
any more to the place where they are working or the place they
are registered.
The deepening of social and economic contradictions can
push Chinese authorities to further reform the hukou system.
For example, the Pearl River Delta, which is the region that
employs the most migrant workers from all over China, has been
suffering for two years from a lack of workforce. Fewer and
fewer migrant workers are willing to go to Guangdong province
because working and living conditions are not improving and are
even deteriorating. Migrants are now moving to other places
like the Yangtze Delta or to large cities closer to their
residence.
In order to tackle this problem, the Guangdong authorities
have already taken some measures that are slowly improving
migrant workers' rights. Chinese authorities might also want to
further
reform the hukou system in order to curb growing social
contradictions, as we now see more and more social movements
among
migrant workers.
Mr. Wang. In addition to what Chloe has already said very
well, I would like to add a few points. I think, Chloe, you are
absolutely right. The hukou system has been weakened by the
reforms, and also by spontaneous migration of a hundred million
people. There is great pressure to change it. Indeed, it has
become less important in terms of allocated resources,
especially in terms of rationing, as Chloe also mentioned,
urban rationing of food and consumer goods.
But why are we concerned about it? Why do we still worry
about it? I think, a couple of things. One, the hukou system, I
think, is fundamentally a Chinese characteristic, if you will,
that allows us to see the nature and the future of the rise of
Chinese power.
Personally, I think the hukou system fundamentally limits
Chinese creativity and innovation. Without that kind of
innovation and creativity, China can hardly become a world-
class power. So, therefore, the hukou system actually serves as
kind of a fundamental check on how much power China can really
amass, beyond being just a processing factory for the world.
Because without economic mobility, without a kind of freedom of
movement, a society cannot be very innovative.
The second reason why it is so important is that I think
the hukou system has a lot to do with the future political
development of China. Whether the Chinese can have kind of a
transparent governance, that is, rule of law, and also possibly
a democracy, has a lot to do with the fate of the hukou system.
As Chloe has already mentioned, under the hukou system the
Chinese people do not have equal citizens' rights, let alone
equal political rights or human rights. Third, I think the
hukou system deserves our attention because it represents the
kind of values and ideals that may not allow for a peaceful co-
existence between China as a world-class economic power and the
United States, because it may lay the groundwork for conflicts
of ideas and values. I do not think it will be easy for the
world to accept Chinese leadership when the government there
has this system that systematically excludes people and
categorizes and rates them according to where they are
administratively. That is a challenge of values and ideals that
may not be that tangible, but on the intangible level it is
going to be very consequential and deserves the attention of
decisionmakers outside of China.
On the ground in China, I think the hukou system is not
disappearing, rather only transforming and changing the way it
functions. I see a combination now of two kinds of exclusions
in China. One kind is still based on the hukou system, where
you are,
because you are from provinces versus coastal areas, from urban
centers versus the countryside. The other kind of
discrimination is based on what you have, money, material
wealth. So it is a combination. Therefore, in China you have a
new social stratification that has emerged. You have a small
elite living in urban areas that monopolize just about
everything in China, including political power, economic
resources, access, opportunity, and so forth. The majority that
lives in the countryside or outside of major urban centers has
lost out completely in all areas. That kind of system, in a
country that is growing so fast and has so much potential to be
a world leader, is posing serious questions to other countries
to think about: ``What does it mean to us? ''
Mr. Dorman. Good. Next, we will turn the questioning over
to William Farris, who is a Senior Counsel on the Commission.
William.
Mr. Farris. Thank you. I follow freedom of expression
issues for the Commission, and I would be curious to hear your
thoughts about how the hukou reforms, the hukou situation, and
various migrant issues are portrayed in the Chinese state-run
media, if you have any experience with that. I would be
particularly interested in hearing if you are aware of any
dissenting voices or voices in the news media that try to speak
on behalf of the migrants or the victims of issues raised by
the hukou system, or if the media is primarily focused on
simply echoing what the government policies are and what the
government stances are with respect to these issues. Thanks.
Mr. Wang. In general, I think the Chinese media, by and
large, is still controlled or is strongly influenced by the
government. So, in general, the Chinese media is basically
echoing what the central government is saying about the hukou
system. So when they launched the reform in 2001, or slightly
earlier, starting in 1998, 1999, and 2001, you see widespread
media coverage about the alleged disadvantages or problems of
the hukou system, primarily based on personal stories of how
the hukou system limits mobility, strangles innovation, causes
personal hardships and suffering, and so on. You do see that
kind of coverage. But I suspect that was primarily echoing the
reform. With reform, now the decision has been made, so let us
talk about the nasty side of it.
But it is quite interesting that the Chinese news media, so
far, has rarely talked about some very important aspects of the
hukou system--for example, management of targeted people--the
subjects have never been mentioned by the news media. Why?
Because of decisions made at the top that this aspect of the
hukou system shall remain internal, not for public discussion.
The Chinese policemen actually are forbidden from talking about
this function in public, pretty much because they know this
does not fit into the general public image they want to have.
In terms of how much hukou is covered or discussed in the
Chinese media or by the Chinese public, as I have noticed, the
urban people, the privileged Chinese citizens, really do not
want to talk too much about the hukou system, although they are
all aware that the system is very important. If you interview
urban residents these days, chances are they will say, ``Oh,
no, this system is not important. We are not even aware of
that. It has become less and less important right now.'' But
then if you talk to the migrants, talk to the rural people, or
talk to the people who live in smaller cities, remote areas who
want to come to the bigger cities and could not, then they will
tell you there is still a mighty presence of hukou and it is
still a very important thing, and they have many personal
stories to tell you.
Now, one exception to the general rule is that, on the
Internet, in cyberspace, you do see some severe criticisms of
the hukou system occasionally posted, before they were yanked
off the Internet by the watchdogs working for the government.
Sometimes we do have a glimpse of the kind of grievances that
are out there, and they are pretty strong. Let me give you one
recent example. There was a bus accident in Shanxi province
that led to the death of many passengers, some of them urban
hukou holders, some of them rural hukou holders. The insurance
company paid compensation to the families for wrongful death,
and they said, according to government policies, the victim who
had the urban hukou would get twice to three times as much
compensation than the rural ones. Then there was a very strong
Internet posting attacking this decision, equating it to racial
discrimination, equating it very strongly to India's caste
system. How long did that posting last on the Internet? Very
briefly, but it was posted for a time. So, therefore, you do
see the strong grievances, but they do not get fully expressed
at all.
The hukou system, finally, is one of those really taboo
issues in the PRC. There are a few things in China that you do
not touch. The Tiananmen event of June 4, 1989, is a taboo
subject, and bad things about top leaders is also taboo, and
hukou is also taboo, unless there is an orchestrated need to
say, ``all right, we are going to reform now, let us talk about
this a little bit.''
Before China joined the WTO, there was an orchestrated
discussion about the hukou system for a particular reason,
because with national treatment under WTO, everybody should
have equal treatment, and there was discussion about the
current inequities. Other than that, this issue is something
urban elites would rather not talk about, or they are
instructed not to talk about. So it is clearly an
underexplored, underdiscussed issue in China, although
everybody is aware of its heaviness, of its relevance, and also
of its consequence.
Ms. Froissart. Since the Chinese Government decided to
accelerate the hukou reform in 2001, there has been wide
criticism about the system in the official media and among
Chinese academics.
The main critics are that, first, the hukou system is
undermining the economic efficiency and is an obstacle to the
rational allocation of the workforce. Second, it hinders
administrative efficiency, since it is too much of a headache
for the urban administration to deal with all the permits and
all the illegal immigrants.
Third, another reason why the hukou is criticized is that
it nurtures the socio-economic imbalance between rural and
urban areas, between big cities and small cities, as well as
between coastal and internal regions.
Since the 16th Congress of the CCP in 2002, addressing
these imbalances became one of the national priorities. This
new political orientation gave further incentives to critics of
the hukou system.
The last reason why the hukou system is criticized is that
Chinese authorities are increasingly referring to ``gongmin
daiyu,'' which means ``national treatment'' or ``equal
treatment among citizens.''
We should not take too seriously the Chinese Government's
intention to grant true citizenship to all Chinese people.
Chinese authorities also repeated many times that they would
not eradicate the hukou system in the near future.
To be a bit provocative, one could say that the Chinese
Government has now learned how to use the politically correct
language of globalization. We can see now more and more
references to values such as ``citizen,'' ``citizenship,'' or
``civil society,'' and ``legal rights,'' in media outlets as
the Chinese Government is now referring to these concepts to
justify some of the reforms. Namely, in 2003, the National
People's Congress Committee passed a bill that changed the name
of the ``residency identity card'' to ``citizenship identity
card.''
The government justified this change by the fact that ``the
concept of residence linked to the private ID card is not
constitutional, it simply refers to the residence, whereas,
citizens are individuals with constitutional rights.'' It was
quoted in China News Daily, November 2002. Article 33 of the
Chinese Constitution indeed provides that all citizens of the
PRC are equal before the law.
So what is interesting now is that China's government is
playing a kind of game with the international community and
with its own people by using this new language of
globalization, publishing white papers on human rights,
amending the Constitution, and waging political campaigns to
foster the rule of law.
This is also a strategy to buy some time domestically and
improve state legitimacy in the eyes of the public. Recently,
populist tactics of the central government have had quite a
strong symbolic impact on migrant workers, who were first
thankful to the government for acknowledging their rights as
citizens. However, those who found that those governmental
statements made little change in their daily life are prone to
lose their faith in the State's ability to protect their
rights. The Chinese Government is playing quite a dangerous
game because it gives new legitimate bargaining tools to
society and cannot control how people interpret these values
and how they try to mobilize them.
There is now an increasing number of chat rooms on the
Internet where people, especially migrants, directly call into
question the hukou system in the name of ``citizenship.'' For
example, they say that the system is in contradiction with
international covenants signed by China, or with the
government's pledge to protect their legal rights, or with
social equity as they pay taxes just as urban dwellers.
Mr. Wang. Could I add a couple of points?
Mr. Dorman. Sure. Yes.
Mr. Wang. Thank you. One, I would like to echo what Chloe
has mentioned. There has been a sophistication, an improvement
in the Chinese news media, or, if you will, the Chinese
propaganda machine, improvements that use modern language and
new terms to at least portray a cosmetic change of the hukou
system. For example, the difference between a ``residence ID
card'' versus a ``citizenship ID card.'' In Shanghai, for
example, they have just launched a campaign to take away the
distinction that used to be on hukou papers saying you are a
rural or urban resident. They took it away and said, ``You are
all residents.'' But that does not really mean that the system
is gone, it just means that it is less intrusive, less ugly.
For example, on the personal ID card, sometimes you cannot tell
whether somebody is from a rural or urban area any more. The
signs are gone. But by looking at the address, you can clearly
tell, ``All right, this person must be from the countryside,
this person must be from a city,'' and so forth. So the
sophistication and improvement of propaganda and news media
coverage in China, in general, and on the hukou system in
particular, is clearly there.
I would suggest that this fact actually opens an
opportunity for the United States to work on the issue, as long
as they accept the terminology. Pretty soon, we could be
forcing a lot of substance into this as well.
So, I would make another point here, Mr. Farris. You
probably will want to use the hukou system as an indicator to
see how much the Chinese news media is opening up and how much
freedom of expression is developing in China by seeing how
honest, how open, and how much the hukou system is being
discussed, and how much the media is allowed to do that, and if
there is any legislative effort in the National People's
Congress to pass, finally, a revised hukou law. Because,
believe it or not, hukou is so important, but it is not in the
Constitution. It is not in the civil code. There is no law
about it. It is almost purely an administrative system based on
only two regulations, one passed in 1959 regarding hukou
registration, the other one, I believe, in the mid-1980s
regarding personal identification cards. There is no
fundamental hukou law. So if the hukou law is passed, then
efforts to make this system more transparent might make great
progress. The proposal has been raised by some deputies of the
National People's Congress since the 1990s. Almost every March
someone was talking about it. But there is no effort at all to
make that a law. If they make a hukou law, this would make it
much more transparent and easy to follow. If they were to adopt
modern legal language more in making that law, especially about
its implementation, it would be a great opportunity for the
international community to say, ``Look, these are probably the
things you ought to do.'' It would also be a great indicator
for Chinese freedom of expression. Thank you.
Ms. Froissart. May I add something?
Mr. Dorman. Sure.
Ms. Froissart. I would just like to mention that the
Chinese power is not monolithic. There are reformers who truly
back bold reform of the hukou system and whose voices are more
publicized, and there are also conservative people who seem to
be more powerful.
For example, at the beginning of 2005, Chinese media
announced that Beijing's Municipal Congress would abolish
discrimination against migrant workers in the capital, namely
allowing them to access employment on equal footing with urban
dwellers. In fact, a counter proposition was also made at the
Municipal Congress that apparently won its favor and no
significant changes have taken place since then.
Conservative people seem to be more numerous and more
powerful at the moment, especially because they are backed by
important state organs and ministries, such as the Ministry of
Public Security.
The Ministry of Public Security is against any significant
reform of the hukou because this system still plays an
important role in managing and controlling the society. But
there are other departments, such as the Ministry of
Agriculture, that support this reform because it will benefit
rural areas. Divisions can also be found inside the same
ministry, as some officials support the reform and others are
against it.
Mr. Farris. Good. Thank you.
Mr. Dorman. I would next like to recognize Commission
Special Advisor, Dr. Kate Kaup. Kate.
Ms. Kaup. Thank you. There seem to be some important
inconsistencies in exactly who has the authority to set hukou
policy in the ethnic autonomous areas. Article 43 of the
Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law states that ``autonomous
governments have the right to control transient or migrant
populations.'' But the State Council issued Implementing
Regulations this May that specifically require autonomous
governments to ``give preferential and convenient working and
living conditions'' to those who have come from outside of an
autonomous area to work or establish businesses. Moreover,
Article 29 of these Regulations mandates that autonomous
governments should ``give appropriate consideration in terms of
employment and schooling to families and children of
professionals of Han nationalities and other nationalities who
go to work in national autonomous areas in remote areas and
frigid zones where conditions are relatively harsh.''
It is interesting to compare hukou policy in autonomous
areas versus in non-autonomous areas. It seems that in non-
autonomous areas, hukou policy favors local residents and
discriminates against migrants, whereas in autonomous areas,
the outside migrants are actually given preferential treatment
at the expense of the local residents.
So I am wondering if you could comment on two questions.
First, to what extent does hukou policy differ in minority
areas and
non-minority areas? The second, and longer, question is who is
determining hukou policy in autonomous areas? Is it the local
government or central authorities? Specifically, which
ministries are responsible for implementing core hukou policy
decisions?
Mr. Wang. Well, very briefly, I will try to answer the
second question first, and then I will take the first question.
They are difficult questions.
Who is making the decisions regarding the hukou system?
According to the regulation about household registration that
was passed in 1959, and thus actually the only legal basis, the
sole legal condition underpinning what was supposed to be just
an administrative regulation but now has become a sole legal
condition underpinning the whole system, the Ministry of Public
Security or the police are the administrators of the system.
But in practice, the Ministry of Public Security has become the
decisionmaker as well, in order to change and fine-tune the
system. So almost all of the major changes, overhauls, and
adjustments of the system, if you look at the record over all
these years, have always been initiated either by the Ministry
of Public Security or have been asked for by the Politburo,
which directed the Ministry to work up a plan and resubmit. In
other words, it has always come from the Ministry of Public
Security. Very rarely do you see some changes initiated by some
other organ of the government, such as the State Planning
Commission, or others. Thus, the Ministry of Public Security,
or the police, basically is the authority for making changes
and running that system.
In that sense, the hukou system is actually one of very few
systems in the PRC that are nationally uniform, if you will.
But as I alluded to in my oral statement, recently the function
of the hukou system in regulating domestic migration has become
fairly localized, in the sense that the so-called entry
conditions, that is, who can get into big cities, now varies
from province to province, from city to city. It is subject to
local decisionmakers, primarily local police departments,
Public Security bureaus, and local Party commissions and local
governments. But the principles are still being determined and
decided by the central government in Beijing. So it is
nationally uniform.
This is actually one of the few systems that is truly
nationally equal in the sense that Mr. Hu Jintao himself, the
president of the PRC, and from him all the way down to prison
inmates, all have hukou somewhere, all have files kept
somewhere. Although, if you are a deputy minister of the
cabinet or higher, your hukou files are secret. People cannot
access your files without special permission. If you are lower
than that, your hukou file is open to all law enforcement
agents. If you have good connections or if you bribe the right
people, you can have access to many people's hukou files, but
access to the ministers' hukou files is a different story.
So, in the sense of decisionmaking and also running the
system, it is uniform nationally. The Ministry of Public
Security and the police are in charge.
In minority areas, I actually only visited the Tibet--
Xizang--Autonomous Region and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous
Region
before, but in Tibet I did not have much time to explore this
particular issue. But in Xinjiang, I did ask around about who
is managing this thing and who is doing that. Clearly, it is
also the
Bureau of Public Security. All hukou-related posters and public
announcements were signed by the Bureau of Public Security,
sometimes jointly with the Bureau of Labor and the minzhengju,
the Bureau of Civil Affairs. But usually it is Public Security.
So I would say the local governments in minority regions, in
ethnic regions like Xinjiang, Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, or
Tibet, really do not have too much power beyond that which is
assigned to local provincial governments. So in that sense, the
ethnic autonomy does not really have too much impact on the
making of decisions or the implementation of the hukou system
in minority areas.
Now, as to the first question you asked, how different,
there are some provincial treatments authorized by the central
government in the minority areas regarding hukou. For example,
when we talk about discrimination, if you look at the college
admission system in China, it is quite interesting. You see a
clear preference given to urban residents in major urban
centers such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Chongqing, Tianjin--all
those areas. But another area that is also heavily favored is
Tibet. So you have had Tibet residents, especially Tibetans,
that enjoy preferential treatment, too. So believe it or not,
sometimes you hear anecdotal stories, kind of funny stories how
people will artificially change their hukou registration to be
from Tibet so they have a better chance to get into good
colleges. So in that sense, there is some kind of preferential
treatment in minority areas.
But beyond that, I think the mechanism, the process, the
functions and the administration of the hukou system in
minority areas is not too much different from Han areas, from
the so-called ``China proper,'' the Han majority regions. I say
that with some evidence--not complete evidence--because this
system is still semi-secret, you know. All this data is not
available to the outside. But there are published accounts
about the Chinese authorities fighting against Muslim cells of
terrorists or East Turkestan, pro-independence groups in
Xinjiang, Muslim groups who are fighting for independence. By
reading these brief accounts, and there are new stories
published in the report, you clearly see the police in Xinjiang
also use hukou files in the same fashion. They also will enter
the houses of the suspects, and also mosques, in the name of
``checking'' hukou information. The Chinese police are
authorized to go to civilians' homes without a warrant, without
court approval, without anything, to do what they call
``verification'' of hukou information. You read these reports
and you see they use this very effectively in Xinjiang to fight
the separatists by saying, ``Oh, we are going to check your
hukou information and see how many people are in your household
now,'' and they check the books. They use it very effectively
for detective work to find out about terrorist activities in
Xinjiang. So if you read those things, you would say, ``Well,
this is not different at all from in the Han majority
regions.'' In that sense, I would say the differences are not
that great.
Incidentally, I would argue the ethnic autonomy or self-
ruling in China, unfortunately, although it is pretty nice on
paper, in reality, really is not that much.
Ms. Froissart. I would like to add some comments about who
is deciding on hukou reforms. The central state designs the
general framework of the reforms, and local governments adapt
it in their local regulations according to their financial
resources and so-called ``local conditions.'' This is the
reason why different emphasis or priorities can be found
locally. In Chengdu the hukou reform basically follows two
strategies. First, as in many cities, it aims to attract and
keep the elite of the migrants. The second strategy is to
extend the limits of the city by integrating the rural
districts of the municipality into the urban area. Those who
benefit from the reform are the peasants living in the suburbs
and those who are left behind are the migrants coming from
other parts of Sichuan province, or elsewhere in the country,
and the ones who are transient.
Since we said much about the limits of the hukou reform, I
would like also to mention that China has made a lot of
progress in very few years. Especially since the custody and
repatriation system was abolished in 2003 following the Sun
Zhigang case.
The custody and repatriation centers were a kind of prison
where migrants without an identity card, residential permits,
and/or working permits, were detained. They were sometimes
forced to work to gain their liberty, or sent back to their
villages. In April 2003, a migrant worker called Sun Zhigang
was arrested in Guangzhou and taken by the police to one of
these centers where he was beaten to death. The case triggered
a public outcry that led eventually to the abolition of these
centers.
Chinese police have now lost one of the most effective
means to compel migrants to register with the administration.
In Shenzhen and Guangzhou, fewer and fewer people have permits
because the police do not have any rights to launch raids
against migrants or ``Strike Hard'' campaigns with the motive
of clearing up the cities of their non-residents.
So an increasing number of migrants are not registered with
the police, which can lead to a false sense of citizenship.
More and more people can just live like this for many years
without having the feeling that they are discriminated against,
until the day they have an industrial accident and cannot get
proper medical or injury insurance coverage, or until the day
they need to apply for administrative services.
For example, I became friends with a young migrant worker
in Shenzhen and I invited her to come to Hong Kong to visit me.
Although she had been working for many years in a foreign
insurance company, her employer never took care of her
residential permit or even asked for it, and without this
permit she could not apply for a Hong Kong visa.
So many migrants just do not notice that they are
discriminated against until they face a problem or want to send
their children to school. In such cases, this is how people
become aware of the role played by the hukou system.
Mr. Dorman. Good.
I would now like to recognize Commission Senior Counsel
Keith Hand. Since we only have about 12 minutes left, I will be
more severe with time limits, because I am sure Carl wants to
ask a final question.
So, Keith.
Mr. Hand. Thanks, David. Thanks to you both for your
presentations.
A quick clarification on this last point about the custody
and repatriation regulations. Since those regulations were
abolished, have the police had any legal basis to detain and
expel someone solely on the basis of their hukou status?
Ms. Froissart. No. This is the point I tried to make.
Mr. Hand. Right.
Ms. Froissart. No. They do not have any legal basis to do
that any more, and in fact they never had. Repatriation of
migrant workers was never stipulated in the law; it was an
abuse of power by the police and a misuse of the custody and
repatriation centers. This was publicly and forcefully
denounced and led to the abolition of the system. These centers
have now returned to their initial mission: providing relief to
the poor and the vagrants.
Mr. Hand. So the only enforcement mechanism is restrictions
on obtaining public services. It seems like a kind of de facto
enforcement. But in theory they do not have any direct legal
authorization to expel someone, correct?
Ms. Froissart. However, it is not because the police do
not have legal authorization to expel someone on his hukou
basis that it won't happen again. Just wait for the Olympic
Games in 2008, for example. I am sure we will see, again, a
``Strike Hard'' campaign. Once you have any kind of big
political meeting or important events taking place in a city,
it is always a good occasion to send back migrant workers to
the countryside. However, urban authorities will potentially
have to find another justification for the campaign other than
chasing the ``three withouts''--migrants without the three
permits. They will, for example, say that they are improving
security, hygiene, or traffic in the capital.
Since the abolition of the custody and repatriation system,
there was no occasion to launch a significant ``Strike Hard''
campaign against migrant workers, but that doesn't mean that we
will not see it again in the future. As you may know, it is not
because the law in China prohibits something that the
authorities are standing aside.
Mr. Wang. Yes. To answer that question very briefly, I
think it is too soon to tell whether the new change made by
Premier Wen Jiabao and the government just a year and a half
ago will be fully and faithfully implemented. We do not know.
It is too soon to tell. As Chloe was mentioning, we have to
wait for the next ``Strike Hard'' campaign to come about to see
what is happening.
My hunch is that it is not going to be implemented, even
with what I understand about what is going on there, because
you already hear some backlash this year, particularly in the
summer. I heard so many complaints by Beijing and Shanghai
residents about the sudden increase of beggars on the streets,
for example, to the point that they grab tourists' legs, asking
for money, because they are not automatically repatriated any
more. But if they are caught begging, the police still have the
legal authority to send them back, because they are not
supposed to be begging in the street. If you wander around the
street without papers that is fine, but you cannot beg.
Also, because the Olympics are coming around and a new
major celebration is coming around next month on October 1 for
National Day, and also the 40th anniversary of the
establishment of Xinjiang, we will see what will happen in
Beijing. After that, we will probably have a better sense as to
how faithful the implementation of this law is once this change
is made. Given the popular backlash, and given the magnitude, I
think the local police are probably still doing the
repatriation thing, but maybe under a different name, and that
is very Chinese.
Mr. Hand. Thank you.
Mr. Dorman. Thank you.
I would like to turn the questioning over to Commission
Senior Research Associate Laura Mitchell.
Laura.
Ms. Mitchell. Thank you. Thank you very much for being
here.
You have both discussed inequalities in labor, particularly
in urban areas. Could you elaborate a bit more on the
inequalities that exist and talk about the kinds of jobs are
given hukou status? What are the social repercussions?
Mr. Wang. To answer the question, very briefly, I think the
discrimination, or exclusion, if you will, against the
outsiders in Chinese urban centers, in terms of employment and
work, can be understood in several ways. One way, is the
availability of jobs. As we talked about earlier, in some
localities, especially in big urban centers like Beijing and
Shanghai, certain jobs are openly declared to be off-limits to
outsiders. If you do not have local hukou residency papers, you
cannot even apply. That is clearly the case.
As recently as 2001-2002, Beijing government officials
listed only two kinds of jobs out of nine or seven--it is in my
book, I do not remember exactly now--that are possibly
available to outsiders, with proper permits, that is. One is
garbage collection/recycling, and the other one is what they
call ``special industries'' that include massage parlors, and
the hotel business and the restaurant business. So it may have
been changed a little bit, but I suspect that access is still a
problem.
The second way to see that is in the area of pay. There is
a clear inequality of pay between local hires and those from
outside, and that is exactly why the Chinese products are found
in so many American stores these days, because many of them
actually are produced by cheap, outside laborers. In Shenzhen,
for example, for almost 10 years, the average wages have not
changed for these assembly line workers. American consumers
love the low price of Chinese goods, but if the workers happen
to be migrant laborers, their life chances basically are
diminished.
The third way to see that is in social services, job
security, and also the welfare system. Job training, and also
all those benefits basically are not available to you if you
are a migrant worker.
Finally, the local community-funded benefits, such as housing
subsidies, education, and public health services. Even cell
phone service. For example, in major cities such as Shanghai
and Beijing, if you do not have local hukou, you do not have
local residency, you cannot get cheaper cell phone service. The
alternative is a much more expensive cell phone service.
So, those are some different ways I think we can see the
inequality in terms of labor and the treatment of labor in the
China.
Ms. Mitchell. Thank you.
Ms. Froissart. Regarding labor rights, the hukou system
enables discrimination in many areas. First, the migrant
workers are the ones who are doing the ``zang, ku, lei,'' the
most difficult, dangerous, and dirty jobs that urban people do
not want to do.
Second, is the pay, as Fei-Ling just said. There are many
studies showing that, for the same work, migrant workers are
paid less than urban workers. They also have less access to
trade unions and fewer opportunities to obtain promotions.
Although labor laws do not discriminate between urban and
migrant workers, the latter are often denied in practice the
right to become trade union members, whether because their
employers do not want a trade union branch to be set up in
their factories or because local trade unions do not feel
concerned by non-residents' fate. It is also even more
difficult for them to lodge a complaint with the urban labor
administration as it is for urban workers because of officials'
``local protectionism.'' The All China Federation of Trade
Unions launched a campaign in the summer of 2003 to call for
migrant workers' enrollment in trade unions. This is a way for
the Federation of Trade Unions to gain more members, and to
reassert the Party's control over this population.
According to my survey, however, migrant workers are
reluctant to join official trade unions. First, they had so
many experiences of being cheated by Party or state
organizations that they really do not trust them any more.
Second, they are also aware of how trade unions are connected
with both political power and employers.
About promotions, I did not meet many migrant workers who
were promoted by seniority or because their proficiency was
acknowledged by their employers. Rather, if they receive any
promotion, it is thanks to their personal efforts to learn more
or to their strategies to get around the discriminatory
practices of their employers. An increasing number of migrant
workers take part in correspondence courses or attend night
schools, especially training schools that are set up by NGOs.
Migrants also try to get a promotion by regularly changing
their work. They try to use the experience they gained in their
previous job to apply for a better job in another factory or
another company. In the Pearl River Delta, thanks to new
measures that aim to prevent employers from retaining migrants'
ID or salaries, some workers just stay over the training period
and then quit their job. But it is really rare for migrants to
receive a promotion in the same factory or company.
Finally, migrant workers do not get any support when they
are unemployed. Since they are expected to go back to their
villages once jobless, they are not entitled to any
unemployment subsidies and are not concerned by training and
reemployment policies in urban areas.
These are, in my view, the main points where stronger
discrimination between migrant and urban workers can be found
regarding labor law. Recently there has been a growing number
of riots and strikes, especially among migrants working in
Southern China in joint ventures, but they seem to be less
directly triggered by this particular discrimination than by
the general lack of institutional guarantees of workers'
rights, especially by the absence of an independent judiciary
and trade unions. Discrimination can become a bone of
contention under three conditions. First, if urban people and
migrants are doing the same jobs or if they are working in the
same places, but factories in the Pearl River Delta, for
example, are mainly hiring migrant workers. Second, when
migrating ceases to be profitable; discrimination is more
bearable when migrants still earn more in the cities than they
would in the countryside. Third, when there is no means to get
around discriminatory practices, turnover is a way for migrant
workers to protect themselves against such practices.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you.
Once again, our 90 minutes has flown by, but I think we
have about a minute left. I would like to give Carl, who
organized the roundtable, the last question.
But we will have to limit the responses to a minute or two,
if we could. Thank you.
Mr. Minzner. Thank you very much, David. Again, thanks to
Chloe and to Fei-Ling.
As the last question, one of my concerns that I would ask
you to comment on is the concept that the hukou system seems to
be evolving into a set of societal divisions within Chinese
cities. The hukou system used to be a division between rural
and urban areas, but it now seems to be moving to a system of
societal divisions within Chinese urban areas, hardening into a
very tough division within the cities. Could you, first, just
comment on that?
Second, one of the other things that strikes me is that
this would be very bad for social stability within China. It
would not seem to be a very good thing if you have very sharp
societal divisions in your urban areas, rich, poor, haves,
have-nots. Could you comment about that, also?
Mr. Wang. You are absolutely right. The hukou is
solidifying lots of divisions, not just between rural and urban
any more. Mostly it is between those who pop in and those who
were originally there. In other words, in my book I describe
China as a collection of many societies, many countries. You go
from Sudan at one developmental level, to Singapore at another,
with various different developmental levels in between. So that
is why, in the recent paper I just finished and which will be
published soon, I hope, I argued that the hukou system provided
stability for the CCP, for sure, but is also brewing
uncertainties and instabilities, precisely because it pits
people against each other.
But the beauty of the hukou system, from Zhongnanhai's
point of view, is that it does not create one-versus-the-other,
kind of black-versus-white divisions. Rather, it creates multi-
divisions, several divisions and it clearly cut in different
ways. So that actually, dynamically, so to speak, may have
helped stability itself. It looks like it brewed tensions,
grievances, unhappiness, and anger, but because it is divided
so many ways, it does not really create viable opposition to
the leadership.
Ms. Froissart. I completely agree. We spoke a lot about
one of the core functions of the hukou system, which is to
control urbanization. But I totally agree with Fei-Ling, that
one of the functions of the hukou is to create divisions within
Chinese society. These societal divisions are, indeed, helping
the Communist Party to exert a tighter control over the
society, just because they make it very hard for the people to
unite on common claims. People just do not have the same rights
and do not face the same situations. The different kinds of
status and social stratifications created by the hukou system
are as much a prop that helps the Communist Party rule over
China as a factor of social instability.
Mr. Dorman. Well, good. With that, I will have to call the
roundtable to a close. But once again, I would like to thank
our two witnesses for a very interesting and very important
discussion.
I can tell by the number of questions still on my sheet,
and the fact that I was only able to ask one question, that we
will have to continue this discussion at some future date.
There is much more to talk about.
But, again, thank you very much. This roundtable has
concluded.
[Whereupon, at 3:35 p.m. the roundtable was concluded.]
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
----------
Prepared Statement of Fei-Ling Wang
SEPTEMBER 2, 2005
I would like to first express my appreciation for the opportunity
to appear before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and
discuss China's hukou (household registration) system today. I believe
there are few other institutions more important than the hukou system
in defining and conditioning politics, social life, and economic
development of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Currently, this
long-lasting and highly peculiar Chinese institution continues its
crucial functions while demonstrating significant changes.
In this written statement, I would like to first briefly describe
the current status of the hukou system and its leading functions. The I
will outline the major changes and reforms of the system in recent
years. Finally, I would like to point out that the hukou system has a
complex role in China that makes its reform both highly difficult and
extremely consequential. In short, the hukou system facilitates a rapid
but uneven economic growth, creates significant social and regional
disparities and injustice, stabilizes the PRC sociopolitical order, and
generates powerful tensions in the areas of human rights, equity of
citizenship, and simple ethics.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ For a comprehensive study of the hukou system, see Fei-Ling
Wang, Organizing through Division and Exclusion: China's Hukou System,
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. For the reforms of the
hukou system, see Fei-Ling Wang, ``Reformed Migration Control and New
List of the Targeted People: China's Hukou System in the 2000s,'' The
China Quarterly, (March) 2004, 115-132. For earlier studies of the
system, see Tiejun Cheng, Dialectics of Control: The Household
Registration (Hukou) System in Contemporary China, Ph.D. dissertation,
SUNYT-Binghamton, 1991. Tiejun Cheng & Mark Selden, ``The Origins and
Social Consequences of China's Hukou System,'' The China Quarterly,
1994. Dorothy J. Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China:
Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market, Berkeley, CA,
University of California Press, 1999.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
HUKOU SYSTEM IN TODAY'S CHINA
Formally adopted in the 1950s, the hukou system can actually be
traced back to the fifth century B.C. during the Warring States period.
It was institutionalized and adopted with varied degrees of
effectiveness and extensiveness as an important part of the Chinese
imperial political system by the dynasties from the Qin (third century
B.C.) to the Qing (1644-1911). The Republic of China (ROC) and the PRC
both established a national hukou system. However, the hukou system
achieved an unprecedented level of uniformity, extensiveness,
effectiveness, and rigidity only in the PRC since the 1950s.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Solinger 1999; Delia Davin, Internal Migration in Contemporary
China. New York, Palgrave, 1999; Michael R. Dutton, Policing and
Punishment in China: From Patriarchy to ``The People,'' New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1992; Lei Guang, ``Reconstructing the
Rural-Urban Divide: Peasant Migration and the Rise of `Orderly
Migration' in Contemporary China,'' Journal of Contemporary China, vol.
10-28, 2001, 471-493; Jianhong Liu, Lening Zhang & Steven F. Messner,
eds., Crime and Social Control in a Changing China, Greenwood
Publishing Group, 2001; Hein Mallee, ``China's Household Registration
System under Reform,'' in Development and Change, vol. 26-1 (January
1995).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 9 January 1958, Mao Zedong promulgated The Regulation on hukou
Registration of the People's Republic of China, formally creating the
PRC national hukou system. Twenty-seven years later, on 6 September
1985, Beijing adopted its Regulation on Resident's Personal
Identification Card in the People's Republic of China. These two
regulations and their implementation procedures are the main legal
basis for the PRC hukou system. Every Chinese citizen knows and is
affected by the hukou system, yet the system has remained an
administrative system, highly nontransparent, not mentioned in The PRC
Constitution.
The PRC State Council and its ministries, mainly the Ministry of
Public Security, and the local public security bureaus and police
stations are the administrators of the hukou system. Specialized hukou
police officers are assigned to be in charge of hukou matters in each
hukou zone: a neighborhood, street, danwei (unit), or a township. The
hukou system requires every Chinese citizen to be officially and
constantly registered with the hukou authority (the hukou police) since
birth, as the legal basis for personal identification. The categories
of non-agricultural (urban) or agricultural (rural), the legal address
and location, the unit affiliation (employment), and a host of other
personal and family information, including religious belief and
physical features, are documented and verified to become the person's
permanent hukou record. A person's hukou location and categorization or
type were determined by his mother's hukou location and type rather
than his birthplace until 1998, when a child was allowed to inherit the
father's or mother's hukou location and categorization.
One cannot acquire a legal permanent residence and the numerous
community-based rights, opportunities, benefits and privileges in
places other than where his hukou is. Only through proper authorization
of the government can one permanently change his hukou location and
especially his hukou categorization from the rural type to the urban
one. Travelers, visitors, and temporary migrants must be registered
with the hukou police for extended (longer than three days) stay in a
locality. For longer than one-month stay and especially when seeking
local employment, one must apply and be approved for a temporary
residential permit. Violators are subject to fines, detention, and
forced repatriation (partially relaxed in 2003). hukou files are
routinely used by the police for investigation, social control, and
crime-fighting purposes.
Officially and internally, the PRC hukou system has one common
governance duty (to collect and manage the information of the citizens'
personal identification, kinship, and legal residence) and two ``unique
missions:'' to control internal migration through managing temporary
residents/visitors; and to have a tiered management of zhongdian renkou
(targeted people) in the population.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Jiang Xianjin & Luo Feng eds., Jingca yewu shiyong quanshu-
zhian guanli juan (Complete guide of police works-volume on public
security management), Beijing, Quinzhong Press, 1996, 218 & 220. BPT-
MPS (Bureau of Personnel and Training-Ministry of Public Security),
Huzheng guanli jiaocheng (The text book on hukou management), Beijing:
Qunzhong Press, 2000, 5 & 161-173.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In practice, the PRC hukou system has performed three leading
functions. First, it is the basis for resource allocation and
subsidization for selected groups of the population (mainly the
residents of major urban centers). This function has shaped much of the
Chinese economic development in the past half century by politically
affecting the movement of capital and human resources. The government
has been traditionally heavily favoring the urban centers since the
1950s with investment and subsidies.
Second, the hukou system allows the government to control and
regulate internal migration especially the rural-to-urban migration.
The basic principles of the PRC migration control have been to restrict
rural-to-urban and small-city-to-large-city migration but encourage
migration in the reversed direction. China's urbanization, as a
consequence, is relatively small and slow compared to its economic
development level. China's urban slums are also relatively small and
less serious compared to those in many other developing nations such as
Brazil or India. Third, the hukou system has a less well-known but very
powerful role of social control especially the management of the so-
called targeted people (zhongdian renkou). Based on hukou files, the
police maintains a confidential list of the targeted people in each
community to be specially monitored and controlled. Such a focused
monitoring and control of selected segments of the population have
contributed significantly and effectively to the political stability of
China's one-party authoritarian regime.
In the 2000s, the hukou system still enjoys a strong institutional
legitimacy in China. Unlike the similar but now disgraced and
disintegrated propiska (residential permit) system in the former Soviet
Union, the PRC hukou system is still both legal and strong. With some
reforms and limited alterations, the hukou system continues to be a
backbone of Chinese institutional structure and fundamentally
contributes to the seemingly puzzling coexistence of China's rapidly
developing market economy and the remarkable stability of the CCP's
(Chinese Communist Party) political monopoly.
REFORMS AND CHANGES IN RECENT YEARS
The hukou system has been an administrative system with sketchy
legal foundations. It has been governed and regulated by mostly
``internal'' decrees and directives.\4\ There have been talks in
Beijing about making a PRC hukou Law to firmly ground this important
system in ``modern legal languages'' since the 1980s.\5\ Yet, by 2005,
this effort is still at a very early stage with no date of completion
in sight.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Wang Huaian et al eds.: Zhonghua renmin gongheguo fali quanshu
(Complete collections of the laws of the People's Republic of China),
Changchun: Jilin Renmin Press, 1989.
\5\ One Chinese National People's Congress (NPC) deputy did propose
a bill for hukou law in March 2001. (Associated Press, Beijing, March
15, 2001). But it had no chance to be even included in the legislature
agenda. Such symbolic actions were seen at the annual meetings of the
NPC every March in 2002-05.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The hukou system's much examined function of resource allocation
and subsidization to the urbanites has now been reduced and even
replaced by the advancing market forces, as the urban rations of food
and many other supplies have now either disappeared or become
insignificant.\6\ Furthermore, there has been fairly extensive cosmetic
reform efforts aiming at erasing the unsightly distinction between
rural and urban residents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Urban hukou holders in major cities, however, still enjoy
significant state subsidies in housing, healthcare, employment, and
especially education. In 2001, for example, a Beijing resident can get
into college with a minimum admission score 140 points (or 28 percent
of the national average score) lower than that in Shangdong Province.
Zhongguo qingnian bao (Chinese youth daily), July August, 2001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The administration of the well-known function of internal migration
control is now reformed, relaxed and localized, given rise to increased
mobility of the population in general and the rural laborers in
particular.\7\ Since 1997 and especially since 2001, there has been so-
called ``deep reforms'' of the hukou system, primarily concerning its
migration-control function. Various schemes such as the so-called
``blue stamp'' hukou (functions like a ``green card'' issued to aliens
in the United States), temporary residency (functions like working
visas), and the locally defined ``entry conditions'' for permanent
migration,\8\ nicknamed ``local hukou in exchange for talents/skills
and investment,'' have significantly increased the mobility of selected
groups of people. Now, anyone who has a stable non-agricultural income
and a permanent residence in a small city or town for at least two
years will automatically qualify to have an urban hukou and become a
permanent local resident.\9\ Some medium and even large cities are also
authorized to do the same, with a higher and more specific income,
employment, and residence requirement.\10\ Yet, the hukou system still
demonstrates its remarkable continuity as the governing principles of
internal migration regulation remain fundamentally unchanged. Other
than the needed labor, especially skilled labor, and the super-rich,
China's major urban centers take in few ``outsiders.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Kam Wing Chan & Li Zhang, ``The Hukou System and Rural-Urban
Migration in China: Processes and Changes,'' The China Quarterly, 1999:
831-840.
\8\ Renmin Ribao (People's daily), Beijing, September 24, 2001, 9.
South China Morning Post, September 29, 2001. Nanfanf dushibao
(Southern metro daily), Guangzhou, September 8, 2001. China New Agency
News Dispatch, Guangzhou, September 24, 2001. Hunan ribao (Hunan
daily), Changsha, January 20, 2002 and Renmin ribao-huadongban
(People's daily East China edition), Shanghai, January 9, 2002. Nanfang
dushi bao (Southern urban daily), Guangzhou, September 8, 2001. Xinhua
Daily Telegraph, Beijing, December 24, 2001.
\9\ But ``all the migration registration procedures are still to be
followed strictly.'' Zhongguo minzhen (China civil affairs), Beijing,
No. 11 (November), 2001, 57.
\10\ Renmin Ribao (People's daily), Beijing, September 4, 2001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some provinces ventured further. Guizhou, one of the poorest
provinces, decided to give a small city/town urban hukou to anyone who
meets the income and residence requirements immediately, waiving the
usual two-year waiting period. Shangxi, another less developed
province, used urban hukou to reward migrant ruralites who have moved
to those remote regions to reclaim desert land through tree-
planting.\11\ However, merely eight months into the reform, in mid-
2002, this national wave to rename rural/urban distinction was ordered
by Beijing to stop, pending ``further instructions.'' The suspension
seems to be primarily the result of the lack of funding and
infrastructure to quickly accommodate new urban residents' massive need
in education, health care, and social welfare.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Xinhua Daily Telegraph, Beijing, August 9, 2001.
\12\ China News Weekly, Beijing and Huaxi dushi bao (Western China
metro news), Chengdu, September 5, 2002.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The third leading, albeit much less known but highly crucial,
function of the hukou system, the management of the targeted people,
however, remains to be highly centralized, rigid, and forceful,
although its effectiveness has been declining steadily. The changes of
the management of the targeted people function so far are mainly
technical and marginal. There actually is a tendency for this
sociopolitical control function to be improved and enhanced in the
2000s. In the summer of 2001, when the rural-to-urban migration quota
was partially replaced in the PRC, one MPS senior official called for
further ``reducing the undue burden on the hukou system by getting rid
of its economic and education functions'' so to ``enhance the hukou
system'' and ``restore its original'' main mission of population
management and social control.\13\ Indeed, the police has been
internally calling for a further enhancement of the targeted people
management in its battle against Muslim terrorist cells in the remote
regions of Western China, where many non-Han ethnic groups live.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Interviews reported by China Net's News Center on http://
www.newsw.china.com, August 20, 2001. Accessed on March 23, 2002.
\14\ Cheng Zhiyong and Bo Xiao, eds. Qiangzhan yu qiangan (Gun-
battles and gun-cases: selections of case reports on anti-terrorism in
Xinjiang), internal publication. Beijing: Qunzhong Press, 2000, 129-
130, 164, & 253-254.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To manage the massive files of the hukou system, the MPS started to
establish electronic hukou data base in 1986 and got special funding
for national computerization of the hukou system in 1992. By 2002,
almost all (more than 30 thousand) police stations have computerized
their hukou management. 1,180 cities and counties joined regional
computer networks for file-sharing of the hukou records of a total of
1.07 billion people (about 83 percent of the total population), and 250
cities joined one single national hukou computer network to allow for
instantaneous verification of hukou information covering 650 million
people (about half of the total population).\15\ In 2002, the MPS
further required all hotels with 50 beds and larger to have computer
links to instantaneously transmit the photos of all guests to local
police station.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ DOP-MPS (Department of Politics-Ministry of Public Security),
Gongan yewu jichu zhishii (Basic knowledge of public security works),
Beijing: Qunzhong Press, 1999, 75-76. Zhongguo qingnian bao (Chinese
youth daily), Beijing, January 5, 2002.
\16\ ``E jingcha kaishi liangxian, huji dangan jiang dianzihua''
(E-police starts to emerge and hukou files will be electronic),
www.news.china.com. Accessed on February 19, 2002. The police believed
that several high profile criminal cases in 2002 were solved due to the
hukou police's routine but now faster gathering and monitoring of hotel
registration information. Author's interviews in Beijing and Shanghai,
2002.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The new leadership of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao since 2003 has shown
signs of considering the negatives of the hukou system as a political
liability and trying in certain way to ease further some of the rough
edges of the system; however, the 2001 reform of the hukou system
remained very much unaccomplished four years later, especially above
the level of small towns and cities, and led to significant regional
discrepancies. By mid-2005, the PRC hukou system has developed an even
stronger character of regionalization.
On March 17, 2003, a young migrant from Wuhan of Hubei Province
named Sun Zhigang was arrested for having no identification papers by
the police in Guangzhou, where he was actually lawfully employed and
registered. He was in typical manner abused by the police and brutally
beaten to death three days later by fellow inmates during the
repatriation process. The case was reported by influential Chinese news
outlets and led directly to a public outcry against the irrationality
and injustice generated by the hukou system, especially the practice of
forced repatriation. A dozen perpetrators, including several police
officers, were sentenced to death or long jail terms. As a result, the
PRC State Council canceled the 1982 ``Measures of Detaining and
Repatriating Floating and Begging People in the Cities,'' issued
``Measures on Repatriation of Urban Homeless Beggars'' on June 18,
2003, and ``Measures on Managing and Assisting Urban Homeless Beggars
without Income'' on June 20, 2003, establishing new rules governing the
handling and assisting of destitute migrants. Many cities, including
the most controlled Beijing municipality, decided soon after that
hukou-less migrants must be dealt with more care; they are no longer
automatically subject to detention, fines, or forced repatriation,
unless they have become homeless, paupers, or criminals.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Zhang Yinghong, ``Sun Zhigang zhisi yu zhidu zhier'' (The
death of Sun Zhigang and the evil of the [hukou] system), Apr. 28,
2003, www.mlcool.com; Caijing shibao (Financial and economic times),
Beijing, June 15, 2003; Changsha wanbao (Changsha evening news), June
13, 2003; Xinhua Daily Telegraph, Beijing, June 21, 2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This change of repatriation policy was a much needed reform and has
been widely praised as a humane move by the Hu-Wen ``new politics.''
However, as an interesting twist that vividly reveals the political
reality in the PRC, the editor and the reporter of the newspaper,
Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern urban news), who broke the Sun Zhigang
story, were soon arrested and sentenced to prison for multiple years
under trumped up charges of bribery and corruption in 2004-05.
Furthermore, empirically, perhaps as a good sign to show the
complicated role of the hukou system, the relaxed measures of forced
repatriation has seemed to cause the surge of paupers in places like
Beijing's Tiananmen Square in the two years afterwards. Hence the
discussion of a ``Latin-Americanization'' and the concern about decay
of the Chinese urban business environment emerged in the PRC's
relatively free cyber space by mid-2005.\18\ To be sure, the latest
hukou reform has relaxed and decentralized internal migration control
mechanisms (mainly in the small cities and towns) but has not touched
the sociopolitical control functions of the system. The majority of the
over 100 million migrants or ``floating population'' still appear to be
unable to change the location of their hukou permanently. In Ningbo of
Zhejiang Province, a national model of the hukou reform, only about 30
thousand migrants, less than two percent of the two million migrants
from the countryside (who constitutes one-third of the city's total
population) are expected to qualify for local hukou during the
reform.\19\ In Shijiazhuang of Hebei Province, only 11 thousand migrant
workers (out of 300 thousand in the city) were qualified to apply for
local hukou in 2001. A key problem has been the difficulty for a
migrant to find a stable job in the city, which has already been
plagued by high unemployment for years.\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Zheng Binwen, ``China should carefully prevent Latin
Americanization,'' www.yannan.cn/data/detail.php?id=5889 May 29, 2005.
\19\ ``Ningbo hukou bilei hongran daota'' (The hukou barriers
collapsing), in Nanfang zhoumu (Southern weekend), Guangzhou, August
31, 2001. Zhongguo qingnianbao (Chinese youth daily), September 17,
2001.
\20\ Josephine Ma, ``Farmers Turn Noses up at Life in the City,''
South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, October 17, 2001.
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Limited and controlled, the latest hukou reform has started to
change the unsightly and discriminatory legal distinction between rural
and urban hukou holders. It is a major albeit highly symbolic victory
of the advancing market institution and new norms of citizenship and
human rights in China. However, ``the hukou system has not been
abolished but only enhanced and improved with scientific means,''
declared a Chinese leading hukou expert associated with the MPS. The
universal residential registration, the basic principles of internal
migration control, and the uniquely Chinese style sociopolitical
control through the management of targeted people all continue and will
be further ``strengthened.'' The hukou reforms are to be ``well-
synchronized; must consider the rational flow and allocation of talents
and labor, and guarantee the stability of socioeconomic order.'' \21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ Wang Taiyuan's interview with People's Net News on October 1,
2001. Accessed on January 19, 2002.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
usefulness versus liability: the future of the hukou system
The PRC hukou system has been playing profound and complex roles in
Chinese political economy. It has contributed significantly to China's
sociopolitical stability by creating an environment that is conducive
to the perpetuation of an authoritarian regime, albeit still leaving
some room for a possible elite democracy to develop. It has allowed the
PRC to circumvent the so-called Lewis Transition and hence to enjoy
rapid economic growth and technological sophistication in a dual
economy with the existence of massive surplus labor, while producing
tremendous irrationalities, imbalances, and waste in the Chinese
economy and barriers to further development of the Chinese market.
Finally, the PRC hukou system has created clear horizontal
stratification, regional gaps, and personal discrimination that not
only directly challenge social justice and equity but also potentially
call China's political cohesion and national unity into question.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ Fei-Ling Wang, Organizing through Division and Exclusion:
China's Hukou System, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005)
especially pp. 129-165.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are clear institutional and policy usefulness of this
otherwise ethically clearly questionable system, which makes its reform
a highly difficult and complicated mission. In a way, the ``positive''
economic impact of the hukou system in China may be viewed as similar
to that of the Westphalia international political system on the world
economy since the end of the Middle Ages. Under the Westphalia system,
there is a political division of the sovereign nations, a citizenship-
based division of humankind, and an exclusion of foreigners maintained
by the regulation and restriction of international migration. These may
have indispensably contributed to the development of the modern
capitalist market economy that has brought unprecedented economic
growth and technological sophistication in the ``in'' parts of the
world, primarily the nations that today form the Organization of
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The world economy has
developed spectacularly in the past few centuries, but in the 2000s, 80
percent of humankind still lives in the less developed nations,
excluded from most of the world's achievements.\23\ China's prosperous
urban centers in its eastern and coastal regions, compared with the
country as a whole, may be functionally viewed as roughly equivalent to
the OECD nations in comparison with the world. A key difference,
however, is that the citizenship-based institutional divide between the
OECD nations and the rest of the world is much more rigidly defined and
forceful, hence more effectively enforced than the hukou barriers that
separate the urbanites in Shanghai and Beijing from the ruralites in
the inland Chinese provinces. Furthermore, a central government in
Beijing that regulates the hukou system and provides some cross-
regional resource reallocation may have made the hukou system a bit
more tolerable to the excluded.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\23\ UNDP (United Nations Development and Planning), Human
Development Report 2001, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, 144
and 157.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The usefulness of the hukou system, especially seen in economic
growth, is accompanied by tremendous negative consequences that are
constituting increasingly heavy liability for the Chinese political
system. A leading consequence of the PRC's hukou system has been, not
surprisingly, a relatively small and slow urbanization in China. It
almost stopped and even decreased for about two decades under Mao
Zedong. During the reform era, China's urbanization has been
significantly slower than its economic growth and industrialization
rate, even though the adaptive measures and the practical relaxation of
the hukou system have accelerated urbanization since the late 1980s. By
2000, China's urbanization was still only less than 30 percent, whereas
countries in the same range of per-capita GDP had an urbanization of
42.5-50 percent. Although by some indicators China's economic
development in the late 1990s was at the level that the United States
attained from the 1950s through the 1970s, China's urbanization was
comparable to that in the United States only in the 1880s and
1890s.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\24\ Robert W. Forgel, ``Aspects of Economic Growth: A Comparison
of the U.S. and China,'' a conference paper, Chengdu, China, 1999, 1-2.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Slow urbanization perpetuates a stable dual economy featuring a
rural majority of the population and a stable, large, ever-increasing
rural-urban disparity of income and resource distribution. Officially,
the urban and rural incomes were disparate by a factor of about 2.2 in
1964, 2.6 in 1978, 2.7 in 1995, and 2.8 in 2000. Semiofficially, the
urban-rural income gap was estimated to stand at a factor of about 4.0
in 1993.\25\ Including indirect income in the form of state subsidies,
the gap stood at a staggering 5.0-6.0 by 2001.\26\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\25\ Zhong Yicai, ``Chengxiang eyuan shehui de yonghe yu yingnong
jingcheng'' (The merging of the dual urban-rural societies and the
pulling of the peasants into the cities) in Shehui kexue (Social
sciences), Shanghai, no. 1(1995), 55-58.
\26\ State Statistics Bureau, ``Cong gini xishu kan pingfu chaju''
(Gap between rich and poor based on the Gini index), in Zhongguo
guoqing guoli (China national conditions and strength), Beijing, No. 97
(January, 2001), 29.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A rigid and stable dual economy based on the exclusion of the rural
population has systematically and artificially suppressed the rural
Chinese market and may have severely limited the growth potential for
the Chinese economy as a whole, which needs domestic demand to increase
continually.
In addition to perpetuating a dual economy and retarding the rural
consumer market, the hukou system has created significant
irrationalities in labor allocation and utilization. A two-tier, well-
segregated labor market for local urban hukou holders and outsiders
exists in Chinese cities, leading to inequalities and inefficiencies
within the same locality.
An obviously negative impact of the hukou system has been that it
brews regional disparities and inequality. As a high price of hukou-
assisted rapid growth, China has had a very uneven economic development
across regions. A group of influential Chinese scholars concluded that
``there are three main disparities in contemporary Chinese society: the
disparities between the peasants and the industrial workers, between
the urban and rural areas, and among the regions.'' \27\ The PRC hukou
system is fundamentally responsible for all three.\28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\27\ Hu Angang, Wang Shaoguang & Kang Xiaoguang, Zhongguo diqu
chaju baogao (Report on China's regional disparities), Shengyang:
Liaoning Renmin Press 1995, 223.
\28\ There are, naturally, many other factors responsible for the
East-West gap in China. Dali Yang (Beyond Beijing: Liberalization and
the Regions in China, London: Routledge, 1999) described a Chinese
political system in which the PRC has been led by an east coast
``oligarchy'' and the interests of the East dominate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Six provinces or metropolises in eastern China, out of 31, received
54 percent of all Chinese research and development funding in 1994; the
eighteen provinces in central and western China got only 35.9
percent.\29\ In 1990, Beijing had the highest per-capita government
spending at 633 Yuan RMB, about 2.7 times the lowest, 106 Yuan in Henan
Province, only a couple of hundred miles away. In 1996, Shanghai had
the highest per-capita government spending of 2,348 Yuan, 8.45 times
the lowest, 278 Yuan, still in Henan Province. In 1998, per-capita
investment in the three metropolises Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin was
7.3, 5, and 3.1 times higher, respectively, than the national average,
while the like in Guizhou Province was only 33 percent of the national
average.\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\29\ Guo Tong, ``Keji touru: Dongzhongxibu bupingheng'' (R&D
investment: Uneven among the east, central and west), Zhongguo xinxibao
(China journal of information), Beijing, Aug. 3, 1995, 1.
\30\ State System Reform Commission), Gaige neichan (Internal
reference on economic reform), Beijing, internal publication. Selected
issues, 1998# 273, 22. Hu Angang & Zou Ping, Shehui yu fazhan: zhongguo
shehui fazhan diqu chaju yanjiu (Society and development: A study of
China's regional gap of social development), Hangzhou: Zhejiang Renmin
Press, 5.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the end of the 1990s, per-capita annual GDP in Shanghai was over
twenty-eight thousand Yuan RMB, twelve times higher than in Guizhou
Province (merely 2,323 Yuan). The average annual wage in the coastal
province of Guangdong was twice that in neighboring Jiangxi Province
(3,595 vs. 1,713 Yuan).\31\ It is estimated that the east-west annual
income gap grew from 48 percent in 1986 to 52 percent in 1991(2,283
Yuan in the east and 1,095 in the west). In 2000, urban hukou holders'
highest per-capita annual income was 11,802 Yuan (in Shanghai); the
lowest was only 4,745(in Shanxi). Rural hukou holders' highest per-
capita annual income was 5,596 Yuan (again in Shanghai), and the lowest
was only 1,331(in Tibet). By 2001, the highest per-capita urban income
was 4.8 times greater in eastern than in western China.\32\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\31\ Hu and Zou 2000, 3.
\32\ State Planning Commission figures, Jingji gongzhuzhe xuexi
ziliao (Study materials for economic workers), Beijing, no. 68(1994),
7. Hunan ribao (Hunan daily), Changsha, Apr. 18, 2001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Politically, the regional gap is contributing to the rise of
regionalism and regional protectionism that have already become major
destabilizing factors in China in the early 2000s.\33\ In response,
Beijing has issued numerous decrees to tear down economic barriers
erected by local corporatist and protectionist activity.\34\ The
central government's political stability and power and even the unity
of the nation may be at stake.\35\ In many ways, the Chinese economy is
not just a dual economy of rural and urban sectors but more a
collection of several regional economies that are at various stages of
development, with hugely different degrees of economic prosperity,
separated chiefly by the hukou system. In other words, developed
societies and the poorest societies coexist within one Nation not only
vertically but also horizontally.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\33\ Some provincial and prefecture governments set up and enforce
quotas for shipping in goods from outside. Chen, Dongyou ed., Zhongguo
nongmin (Chinese peasants), Nanchang: Jiangxi Gaoxiao Press, 1999, 206.
Even the official journals start to list various ``striking'' cases of
regional and local protectionism that damages law enforcement and
market development. Dadi (Earth), Beijing, no. 101(May 2001), 46-47.
\34\One early effort was the State Council's Directive on Breaking
down Regional Blockade of the Market, Nov. 10, 1990. A later such
effort was the almost identically titled State Council Decree 303 of
Apr. 12, 2001.
\35\ Hu Angang et al. 1995, 27-31, 90-97, and 258-78; Minxin Pei,
``China's Governance Crisis,'' Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81-5, September-
October, 2002, 96-109.
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Consequently, the hukou system had twisted the Chinese social life
to create a peculiar horizontal stratification. This system may have
provided organization and social stability to a large nation,
especially in a time of rapid economic development and social and
cultural change. It forms solid groupings and associations beyond
family and employment relations. Ethically, however, institutional
exclusion produces troubling questions about the equity and equality of
the human and civil rights of citizens of the same nation. A slow
urbanization naturally segregates the citizens and creates cultural
biases against the excluded rural population.
Furthermore, institutional exclusion discourages and even hinders
the development of creativity and ingenuity that often accompany
people's horizontal and vertical mobility in a society. Chinese
culture, social stratification, and social norms and values have all
developed regional characteristics as well as a rural-versus-urban
differentiation.
The excluded Chinese peasants still by and large accept their fate
under the PRC hukou system as it is. The extent to which those who are
excluded in the rural and backward areas, three-quarters to two-thirds
of the total Chinese population, will continue in their role as the
reservoir to hold the unskilled millions, hence to make a
multigenerational sacrifice for rapid modernization of the Chinese
urban economy, remains increasingly uncertain. Unemployment pressure
alone, likely to be significantly worsened by China's new WTO
membership, may make hukou-based institutional exclusion even less
bearable. The hundred-million-strong migrant (liudong)
population'*registered holders of temporary hukou and unregistered
mangliu (blind floaters)'*clearly a second-class citizenry outside
their home towns in their own country, has already become a major
source of the rising crime rate and even of organized crime in the
PRC.\36\ How much and how quickly trickle-down and spillover effects of
prosperous, glamorous urban centers will be felt in rural areas will be
key to the continuation of China's sociopolitical stability.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\36\ Li Zhongxin 1999, 11-13 and 23-24.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
How long a hukou-based rapid but uneven economic growth can last,
at the
expense of excluding the majority of the population, remains a
legitimate and
profound question. Another leading concern is the running-away of
vertical and horizontal social stratification of Chinese society. The
combination of these two stratifications not only has affected the
allocation of resources, opportunities, and life chances in general for
every Chinese, but also has largely shaped Chinese values, behavioral
norms, and culture that are not conducive for rule of law, equity of
human rights, or individual freedom. A small, elitist, urban hukou
holders living in major urban centers, are masters of this people's
republic at the expense of excluding and discriminating against the
majority of the people, who are growing in discontent and rightfully
angry.\37\
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\37\ Incidentally, among my interviewees, privileged urban dwellers
tend to take the PRC hukou system for granted and assert that the hukou
system ``really does not make much difference in life,'' while the
excluded ``outsiders,'' especially the ruralites, insist that the hukou
system affects their lives personally and persistently.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clearly, the PRC hukou system right now poses serious ethical,
legal, and international questions that demand creative and effective
solutions. The hukou system has systematically created barriers against
labor mobility, thus limiting the rationalization of a young market
economy there and perpetuating poverty for the majority of the
population living in the rural areas as the excluded under unfair
treatment and naked exploitation. The lack of genuine vertical and
horizontal mobility, in addition to the lack of freedom of speech and
individual and property rights, has seriously impeded creativity and
innovation in China. The system contributes to the growing
regionalization of the Chinese political economy with profound
consequences for the Chinese economic development, the capacity of the
central government, and even the unity of the Chinese nation.
Yet, to Chinese leaders, the hukou system still appears to be a
familiar, important, reliable, and effective statecraft. Currently,
much of this system is still largely internalized as a part of the
Chinese culture and enjoys a high degree of legitimacy, even among the
excluded. Obviously, the hukou system relies heavily on the political
power of the CCP to continue; yet the functions of the system have also
become highly critical to the stability and continuation of the CCP
political system. Mounting tensions the system brews and the resultant
scrutiny and criticisms are likely to force more changes as the PRC
state may have to retreat further. Ultimately, the fate of the hukou
system will reflect and determine the fate of the current PRC
sociopolitical order and China's chance of realizing its enormous
economic potential.
______
Prepared Statement of Chloe Froissart
SEPTEMBER 2, 2005
I would like to take the example of migrant children's access to
education as an illustration of the institutional exclusion created by
the hukou system as described by Professor Wang in his book.\1\ My
presentation will mainly draw on the fieldwork I have been carrying out
for four years in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Fei-Ling Wang, Organizing Through Division and Exclusion,
China's Hukou System, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will first recall the impact of the hukou system on migrant
children's access to education as it appeared at the beginning of the
2000s and is still prevalent now. But as education is a determining
factor in a country's development and involves individuals' rights as
much as state's interests, there has been room for many recent
improvements. I will thus give an overview of these developments as
well as the forces at stake in the evolution process by citing concrete
examples, and I will finally endeavor to weigh the impact of the
reforms.
THE IMPACT OF THE HUKOU SYSTEM ON MIGRANT CHILDREN'S ACCESS TO
EDUCATION
Despite the fact that China recognized in its Constitution (1982)
the right to every citizen to receive an education and in 1986
introduced in its legislation a system of compulsory education lasting
nine years for every child from the age of six or seven, the
administrative system of the hukou still prevails over the legislation
and prevents migrant workers' children from receiving a proper
education.\2\ According to this system, belonging to society is still a
function of one's place of registration. Local governments guarantee
the education of children, like all other social rights, only for their
own constituents, resources being allocated according to the number of
permanent residents. Migrants' children were completely excluded from
urban education system until 1998, when they gained the right to enroll
temporarily in urban schools on the conditions of being registered with
a host of administrative organs and paying ``Temporary Enrollment
Taxes'' that could reach several thousands yuan a year. As the vast
majority of the migrants are illegal immigrants who cannot afford such
high schooling fees, private schools, sometimes set up by migrants
themselves, started to spring up in response to the needs of these
children in the major urban centers in the mid-1990. In return of very
low enrollment fees (300 yuan a semester for the first year of primary
school in the mid-1990, 600 yuan now), pupils had to put up with
deplorable sanitary, security and teaching conditions. Moreover, as
most of these substandard schools have no legal status, they cannot
award certificates for courses completed, which is a considerable
problem when the students wish to re-enter a state school or have the
level of their studies recognized for the purpose of finding a job.
Established out of the control of the state, these schools are
routinely banned and demolished without the authorities worrying about
placing the children in other schools.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ China also ratified the United Nations Charter on the Rights of
the Child and signed--but not yet ratified--the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights, both of which mention the right to an
education.
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PUBLIC OUTCRY
Education is not only an ethical question that recently
crystallized the debate over citizenship in China; it also involves
economic development and social stability, which are of great concern
to the Chinese state. This is the reason why Chinese authorities were
particularly receptive to the public outcry over this issue. Following
the rising number of migrant children in the cities (two to three
million in 1996, seven million now), solving their education problem
became increasingly urgent. Over the past few years, this problem
triggered a public outcry supported by scholars, journalists and also
some political figures and organizations that warned against the
economic, social and possibly political price the country might pay in
a near future if this social injustice was not addressed. Preeminent
scholars, some of whom belong to government think tanks, have over the
past few years, published detailed reports submitted directly to the
government.\3\ Scholars' concerns have been echoed by some political
figures. In 2002 and 2003, Chinese People's Political Conference
members and National People's Congress representatives, especially the
Communist Youth League, warned that if migrant children remained on the
fringe of society and were not equally treated it would generate
resistance to society. At that time indeed, many reports showing
increasing criminality and delinquency among migrant workers were
released. I also noticed through my fieldwork inquiries that migrant
workers whose children faced unfair treatment tended to question
hukou's legitimacy, saying that they were ``Chinese citizens'' or
``Sichuanese citizens'' just as urban dwellers and should be treated
equally. At that time, the press started to support this point of view
by publishing papers mentioning the need of equal treatment among
citizens, especially as far as education was concerned.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ For example, Han Jialing of the Institute of Sociology of the
Beijing Academy of Social Science published in 2001 an outstanding
report called ``Research report on the situation of migrant children of
compulsory school age in the municipality of Peking'' that had a great
impact on Chinese authorities, but Wang Chunguang from the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences, as well as Cui Chuanyi and Zhao Shukai of
the State Council's Research Center for Development also did a great
amount of research and lobbying work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EVOLUTION OF THE CENTRAL POLICY
As previously mentioned, the central state first acknowledged the
necessity for migrant children to receive an education in 1998. In May
2001, the State Council published a Decision on the Reform and the
Development of Basic Education, that mentioned the need to take account
of the education of migrant children by making their acceptance in
public schools a priority. But this document did not address the
problem of temporary enrollment fees. In August 2002, the Chinese
Ministry of Education convened a working session mainly devoted to the
problem of private schools and called upon local governments'
responsibility in better controlling and supporting these schools.
However, these were more symbolic acknowledgments of the problem
without any precise or compulsory directives and had little impact.
A major step forward was made in January 2003 with the issuing by
the State Council of the Ruling on Successfully Managing the Employment
of Rural Farm Workers in the Cities and their Access to Public
Services. This document carried a clause stipulating that ``the right
to compulsory education for children of migrant workers must be
guaranteed.'' Local governments are required to take steps so that
these children can enjoy the same teaching conditions in state schools
as city
residents do and support any ``substandard schools'' by bringing them
into the development plans for education and helping them to improve
their material and pedagogical conditions instead of eliminating them.
Finally, urban governments are
required to devote a part of their budget to the education of these
children. In September 2003, the State Council issued a more detailed
document\4\ providing that governments of destination cities will be
responsible for the nine-year compulsory education of the children of
migrant workers. The education of these children should be included in
the general social development plan of the cities and local governments
should channel more funds to run public schools where migrant children
should be mainly enrolled. Private schools should benefit from
preferential conditions to obtain permits and enjoy special support and
monitoring from local authorities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Propositions for Improving the Work on Compulsory Education of
Children of Migrant Workers in the Cities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Migrant children's access to education was made a main topic of the
annual session of the NPC in March 2004 by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.
In February, in the wake of the session, all the media were told to
report on the issue. This actually saved many private schools that were
bound to be banned, such as Doushi School in Chengdu. This school,
located in Jingniu district, opened its doors after the Chinese
Festival holidays and immediately received a notice of closing issued
by the district government. The parents of the 200 children already
enrolled in the school spontaneously contacted the local press that
published an article entitled: ``Closure of Illegal School Leaves
Migrants' Children Wanting To Be Treated as Citizens'' \5\ and stressed
local authorities' responsibility in providing education to migrant
children. China Central Television read the article and went to Chengdu
to shoot a report on the school, followed by local television stations.
The ban was immediately revoked and the school was promised to obtain a
license very soon. The 2004 annual session of the NPC made two
important decisions to improve migrant children's access to education:
first it proposed to inscribe in the Constitution migrant children's
right to receive an education and second it announced the suppression
of the Temporary Enrollment Fees in September 2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Tianfu Zaobao (Tianfu Morning Paper), February 10, 2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ENFORCEMENT OF CENTRAL POLICY AT THE LOCAL LEVEL: THE CASE OF CHENGDU
Chengdu municipality followed quite well the central guidelines and
did a lot recently to improve migrant children's access to education.
These improvements are due to favorable political conditions in the
Sichuan capital. First, as more than 90 percent of migrant workers in
Chengdu are coming from Sichuan province, the municipal government's
administrative responsibility toward Sichuanese migrants is much
stronger than the responsibility of big cities toward migrants from all
over China. At least, the provincial government can put pressure on the
municipality and compel it to better protect migrant workers' rights.
For this reason, conditions for migrants have been traditionally better
in Chengdu than in big coastal cities. Second, Chengdu First Party
Secretary Li Chuncheng made the ``unification of urban and rural
areas'' the new motto of Chengdu municipality. During a public
appearance on September 1st, 2004 he said this ``unification'' not only
means that peasants are to become urban citizens but also that equal
rights should be granted to them as far as social and medical
insurance, schooling and employment opportunities are concerned.
Finally, Chengdu scholars have been very much involved in promoting
migrant workers ``citizenship rights.'' Namely researchers from the
Institute of sociology of the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences set up
a ``Network for Social Support to Chengdu Migrant Workers'' in 2002 in
collaboration with the provincial Women's Federation and UNESCO. Their
commitment in lobbying the authorities and in rising public awareness
on this issue undoubtedly had a significant impact. Scholars managed to
rally the support of the local media by convening regular meetings with
journalists to explain to them the situation of migrant children. In
2004, they even launched a book collecting campaign and organized
social activities for these children in collaboration with local
newspapers and renowned companies. The result is that press reports now
systematically support the interests of migrant children and almost
always side with migrant schools whereas they use to voice local
authorities' views in the past.
However, there are always discrepancies between the general and
ideal principles devised by the central state and their local
implementation. As we will see, new public policies in Chengdu do not
aim to accommodate all the children equally: as the fault line between
urban and migrant children is still maintained, a new tiered management
between different kinds of migrant children also appeared. Let's
consider how Chengdu municipality implemented the three central
guidelines of enrolling migrant children in public schools, suppressing
the Temporarily Enrollment Fees and enhancing the management of private
schools.
Migrant children's enrollment in state schools
In December 2003, Chengdu government announced that a public school
for migrant children will be opened in each of the five urban districts
within two years and that the municipality will invest 20 million yuan
to support the financing of these schools by the district governments.
In fact, only two new schools were opened, the rest are urban schools
that were enlarged to receive children of non-Chengdu hukou holders who
can not be considered as migrant workers (often white collar workers
from other cities). Honghuayan School in Chenghua district was the
first to open its doors in September 2003 and can be held as a model.
Its early opening was driven by the high concentration of migrant
children in this district and the necessity for the local authorities
to compete with the growing number of illegal private schools. It
provides schooling for the whole compulsory education period from the
first year of primary school to the third year of middle school. In
October 2004, the school had 1464 students and 54 teachers. The
district government invested 3 million yuan in the school and pays the
teachers, who are transferred from urban schools. Thanks to these
public investments, schooling fees are very low: 302 yuan a semester
for primary school and 491 yuan for middle school. Although the
material conditions are of lower standard than the ones of the schools
for urban children (buildings are prefabricated, the school's acreage
is to small for the number of its students, lack of computers etc.),
teaching and security conditions meet the urban standards. The school
can of course confer state certificates, but many pupils do not have
the required level to pass the exams.
School enrollment is subject to the condition of having the ``three
certificates:'' hukou booklet, temporary residential permit and the
work contract of one of the parents. A tax bill is also sometimes
required.
Wuhou district opened Jinghuazheng School in September 2004. The
school only provides primary education and has three kindergarten
classes. It received urban pupils\6\ months after its opening, likely
because it was not financially sustainable. Thus, among its 1331
primary students, only 467 were migrant children in November 2004.
Among its 51 teachers, some come from urban schools, others are
trainees or do not have the credentials to enter better urban schools.
The district government invested 4 million, which enables this school
to have slightly better material conditions than Honghuayan, but the
schooling fees are higher: 551 yuan a semester for primary school.
Migrant pupils who do not have the three certificates (which means most
of them) have to pay 223 yuans more each semester. The ones who have
the three certificates do not need to pay these ``Temporary Enrollment
Fees'' since their education budget is transferred by the
administration of their village of origin to the urban district
administration and can cover part of the education costs in the city.
Computer lessons are charged separately, although the fees are very low
(30 yuan a semester). This school is thus more expensive than the
previous one, does not cover the whole compulsory education period and
have potentially slightly less qualified teachers but has the advantage
of mixing urban and migrant children.
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\6\ These pupils are in fact children of former peasants leaving in
Chengdu suburbs who recently obtained an urban hukou (nongzhuanfei),
that is why mixing these urban children with migrants is less
problematic.
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From these two examples, we can see that lack of public funding and
teachers still remains the main obstacle to migrant children's equal
access to education. Very few pupils can enroll in the public schools
created for them. Conditions at these schools are lower than the urban
ones and also vary from a district to another according to local
government budget.
Suppression of Temporary Enrollment Fees
Starting from September 2004, Chengdu municipality exempted some
children from paying Temporary Enrollment Fees. The most recent
conditions\7\ to meet in order to benefit from this policy were to
apply for a ``Certificate of Entitlement to Compulsory Education for
Children of Migrant Workers'' with the street committee to which one
belongs. To obtain this certificate, one has to provide the following
documents: temporary residential permit smart card of one of the
parents and of the child, original of the hukou booklet of one of the
parents and of the child, recent labor contract, employment certificate
and salary slip, proof of registration with the Labor and Social
Security Bureau at the municipal and district level, tax bill,
schooling certificate of the previous year and school transfer
certificate. These conditions are of course too high for migrant
workers, most of them working in the informal economic sector, not
having work contracts or high enough salaries to pay taxes and being
usually not registered with any administration. Even urban people
cannot, most of the time, meet these conditions. This policy in fact
benefited white-collar workers from other cities or the wealthier and
more stable among the migrants' elite, who thus had an incentive to
legalize their situation. However, official statistics show that quite
a significant number of ``foreign'' children benefited from this
policy. According to an official in charge of education in the Chenghua
district, in October 2004, 17,000 children were exempted of Temporary
Enrollment Fees in this district. According to a press report,\8\
Jingniu district government allocated 2.5 million yuan for compulsory
education subsidies to exempt 13,867 migrant children from paying
Temporary Enrollment Fees, 89.64 percent of them were enrolled in
public schools.\9\ For those who cannot produce these certificates,
Temporary Enrollment Fees still amount between 800 and 1,600 yuan a
year in primary school and 2,000 to 3,600 yuan in middle school
according to the standing of the school and the class attended.
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\7\ Published in May 2005.
\8\ Tianfu Morning Paper, December 10, 2004.
\9\ However, we should keep in mind that official statistics are
often not reliable. For example, according to the municipal
authorities, there are 1.5 millions outsiders in Chengdu, 80 percent of
whom are migrant workers. Among their 70,000 children, 50,000 are
enrolled in public schools and 20,000 in private schools. The first
figure is certainly exaggerated and should encompass children of
outsiders who cannot be considered as migrant workers. Besides,
according to my interviews, one of the most famous principals in
Chengdu (Mr. Zhou Yongan) set up eleven private schools that have
already enrolled 20,000 children and a few other private schools enroll
several thousands children each (Caiying School has around 6,000
pupils). I estimate the number of children enrolled in private
migrants' schools at 40,000.
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Migrant children's private schools management
Because public education still remains beyond the reach of migrant
children, the vast majority of them are enrolled in private schools
that are around 70 now, up from 10 two years ago. In September 2004,
Chengdu government acknowledged that the financial efforts it could
bare to enroll these children in public schools were insufficient\10\
and announced that it would closely monitor twenty private schools
without permit to help them to improve their conditions. The ones that
would meet the standards after the trial period would receive a
license. But very few schools were legalized. At the beginning of 2004,
only five schools had a permit, they are now less then ten. In fact,
the local authorities' position toward these schools did not change.
They are reluctant to channel more funds and appoint more staff to
monitor these schools, they are apprehensive being held responsible in
case of accident or if school directors turn out to be conmen. Above
all, they are very hostile to schools that look dreadful and are
perceived as an element of depreciation in the urban landscape. A good
indicator of the lack of public commitment toward these schools is that
Chengdu municipality has still not issued directives to which private
schools for migrant children should abide to obtain a permit. Once the
spotlights of the NPC Congress were turned off, Doushi School was never
granted a permit and was even demolished last May after a developer
bought its plot.\11\ Many other private schools, and even Honghuayan
public School, are bound to face the same problem in a near future: for
local authorities, economic development prevails over migrant
children's education.
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\10\ According to official figures released by Chengdu authorities,
the municipality spends annually 2,000 yuan on each pupil of compulsory
school age. Based on 70,000 migrant children to be enrolled in public
schools, the municipality has to increase its education budget by 140
million yuan in a year. Chengdu also lacks teachers, who are only 3,000
according to the number of children permanently registered.
\11\ Land in China still mainly belongs to the state but
authorities now start to sell it to developers. Hence, owning real
estate is not a guarantee against expropriation.
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assessment of the impact of the reforms and their limits
Public policies in favor of migrant children's access to education
do not eradicate the impact of the hukou system but enable a more
flexible management of this system. These policies first benefit to the
children of the wealthier, most stable and legally registered
``outsiders'' who are held to contribute the most to the economic
development of the city, but many of whom cannot be considerate as
migrant workers stricto sensu. Chinese rural migrants are thus treated
in their own country in a very similar way to foreign immigrants in the
United States, who can be granted with a green card according to their
merits and the tax amount they pay. Public policies in favor of migrant
children schooling--just like many other recent policies targeting
migrant workers--thus function as a tool to filter this population and
control urbanization by deliberately excluding the poorest and the
transients. Whereas this reform does not erase completely the
difference of treatment between urban and migrant children, it has a
noteworthy consequence: it creates a tiered management of the migrant
population and thus generates new social stratifications within this
social category. We now can distinguish five categories of children
with different access to education:
1. Those who are integrated in urban public schools because
their parents can afford paying the Temporary Enrollment Fees.
These children need a temporary residential permit but no other
documents.
2. Those who are integrated in urban public schools because
they were
exempted from paying the Temporary Enrollment Fees. In this
case, economic discrimination has been apparently replaced by
more stringent administrative discrimination (see supra the
list of documents that have to be provided), but in fact the
conditions to meet in order to enjoy fees exemption favor the
wealthier migrants. Children belonging to these first two
categories receive the same education as urban pupils but are
still discriminated against, whether economically or
administratively, not mentioning popular discrimination.
3. Those who are enrolled in substandard public schools.
These are the children of legally registered and quite wealthy
migrants since a work contract and sometimes also a tax bill
are required to register in these schools. But the list of
documents to be provided is not as long as the one required to
enter a public school for urban children.
4. Those who are enrolled in licensed private schools. These
children do not need to be legally registered but tuition fees
are higher than in public schools for migrant children.
Children belonging to these last two categories do not enjoy as
good conditions for education as urban pupils from whom they
are generally segregated. However, pedagogy in these schools
often better match the needs of these children. At least, their
education has official recognition and they can receive course
certificates.
5. The vast majority of those who are enrolled in illegal
substandard private schools. These are children of poor and
illegal migrants. They pay more than the children of categories
2 and 3 enrolled in public schools and are not receiving a
proper education.
This typology clearly illustrates one of the key points made by
Professor Wang: institutionalized discrimination anchored in the hukou
system remains while being now coupled with discrimination between the
haves and the have-nots. The children who receive State's support are
the wealthier and better integrated while the needy children are still
denied proper schooling and will likely go back to the countryside to
continue their education. The reforms hence nurture social
stratifications and rural-urban socio-economic imbalances.
I should also mention that the children who are enrolled in public
schools thanks to state subsidies are only temporarily integrated until
the end of the compulsory education period. Entering high school is
subject to very high tuition fees and Temporarily Enrollment Fees, and
very few migrant children can afford it. Even those who can complete
high school in urban areas will have to go back to their villages to
take the university entrance exam, which is much more difficult than in
the cities, as Professor Wang demonstrates in his book.
Reforms thus do not acknowledge education as a universal right and
do not fundamentally call the hukou system into question. The
proposition made by NPC representatives in March 2004 to inscribe in
the Constitution and in the law migrant children's access to education
as a personal right to be granted wherever they are living was not
followed up with any effects. Both central and municipal governments
are opposed to this idea. The central government disagrees because it
would have to greatly increase its education expenditures. Indeed, the
cost of migrant children's education in the cities could not be simply
covered by the transfer of education budgets from the villages, these
budgets being much lower than the urban ones. Municipal governments do
not favor this proposal because they do not want cities to be flooded
with migrant workers who will increase their expenditures and generate
the economic blockages analyzed by Professor Wang.
RECOMMENDATIONS
A lot of progress has been made in only two years as more children
who are not urban residents can now receive an education. However, the
issue is still exposed to institutional blockages and will not be
thoroughly solved without bold political and administrative reforms,
namely the abolition of the hukou system followed by corresponding
taxation and redistribution reforms.
However, in accordance with its international and domestic
commitments to fully realize the right to education, China should stop
using restricted access to education as a way to control urbanization.
Given its actual administrative system and limited financial resources,
China must take the following practical steps to address the
discriminatory treatment faced by migrant children:
(1) To allow the existence of private schools for migrant children
and subject them to state monitoring. It is the duty of the state to
regulate the adequacy of administration, teaching and content of
education offered by these schools and to prevent them from
mercantilism. Furthermore, providing monitoring and support to private
schools is financially less demanding than to accommodate all the
migrant children in state schools or setting up new public schools for
them. Central and local governments should expeditiously draft clear
and consistent regulations under which migrant schools that can meet
certain basic criteria can quickly, cheaply and easily obtain legal
status. Governments should provide support to these schools to help
them meet the same standards of those available in the state schools.
(2) To reverse the education's decentralization policies that took
place in China during the 1980s and the 1990s, and thus recentralize
education expenditure in addition to substantially increase resources
for education.\12\ One of the reasons why only wealthy and stable
migrant families can have access to education is that allocation of
resources is still decided locally depending on the number of people
legally registered. Recentralization of education expenditure should
follow the acknowledgment of increased mobility among Chinese people
and enable them to choose the
location of the schools their children will attend. Recentralized and
increased expenditure for education is the only means to insure that
education is granted as a personal right, and should not depend on the
status of the parents, such as whether they have any ``out-of-plan''
children or possess the required permits.
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\12\ The Chinese state currently allocates only 2.5 percent of the
GDP to education, which represents one of the lowest rates in the
world.
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(3) Special warning: One of the reasons cited by the authorities
for putting migrant children into special classes or ``simplified
schools,'' which are generally of lower quality, is that the children
have not achieved the same academic standards as their urban
counterparts. Such a reason--a function of the low level of funding
provided to rural schools--should not be used as a means to
discriminate against migrant children. These special schools or classes
sometimes are a way to adapt teaching to the needs of the students.
However, they also continue segregation against them and encourage
further popular discrimination.