MCLC: China moves to change registration rules

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: China moves to change registration rules
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (7/30/14):
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/world/asia/with-urbanization-as-goal-chin
a-moves-to-change-registration-rules.html

With Urbanization as Goal, China Moves to Change Registration Rules
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

HONG KONG — The Chinese government on Wednesday issued proposals to break
down barriers that a nationwide household registration system has long
imposed between rural and urban residents and between regions, reinforcing
inequality, breeding discontent and hampering economic growth.

Yet even as officials promoted easier urbanization and the goal of
permanently settling another 100 million rural people in towns and cities
by 2020, they said that change to the system — which links many government
entitlements to a person’s official residence, even if that person has
long since moved away — must be gradual and must protect big cities like
Beijing.

“This reform of the household registration system will be more decisive,
vigorous, broad-ranging and substantive than it’s ever been,” Huang Ming,
a vice minister of public security, said at a televised news conference
<http://www.china.com.cn/zhibo/2014-07/30/content_33083967.htm> in Beijing
where officials explained the proposals set out in a document
<http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/2014-07/30/content_8944.htm>released
Wednesday.

But Mr. Huang later added a caveat that displayed the caution accompanying
the promises of change. “At the same time, however, specific policies have
to be tailored to the practical circumstances of each city,” he said.

Changing China’s household registration rules was one of the main planks
of reform promised by President Xi Jinping at a Communist Party meeting in
November 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/world/asia/china-to-loosen-its-one-child
-policy.html>, and it was reiterated in plans for more vigorous
urbanization issued this year
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-03/16/c_133190495.htm>. Now
Mr. Xi’s test will be achieving that promise, city by city, despite qualms
and resistance from local officials and many long-term urban residents.

“I think there’s more hope of substantive change this time,” said Lu
Yilong, a professor at Renmin University
<http://ssps.ruc.edu.cn/en/cnt.php?id=255&fid=1&navid=0> in Beijing who
studies household registration divisions and their effects. “This is more
a coordinated, top-down reform, unlike in the past when local governments
had more room to set their own rules. There have been changes already, and
now we need a more systematic approach.”

The barriers in China’s system of household registration, or hukou, date
to Mao’s era. In the late 1950s, the system was implemented to keep
famished peasants from pouring into cities. The policies later calcified
into caste-like barriers that still often tie citizens’ education, welfare
and housing opportunities to their official residence, even if they have
moved far away from that place to find a livelihood. The restrictions
hinder permanent migration between many urban and rural areas, and between
regions and cities, such as between, say, Shanghai and Beijing.

“The main problem now is not the rural population moving to a local city,
that’s quite easy,” said Ren Xinghui, a researcher for the Transition
Institute <http://www.zhuanxing.cn/html/Ren-Xinghui/index.html>, a
privately funded organization in Beijing, who campaigns against
educational discrimination directed against children from the countryside.
“The main problem is migration across provinces and cities, and the
controls imposed by the big cities against cross-region migration. That’s
the key to hukou reform.”

Despite market forces that have transformed China’s economy, many of those
barriers persist. Nowadays, about 54 percent of the population lives
long-term in towns and cities. But only 36 percent of the Chinese people
are counted as urban residents under the registration rules, according to
government statistics
<http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90785/8567957.html>. Under a plan
issued in March, the government wants the long-term urban population to
reach 60 percent of the total by 2020, and to increase the number with
urban household status to 45 percent.

The divisions have become a source of discontent, and sometimes protest —
when, for example, children from the countryside or from another city
cannot enroll in a local school or take the university entrance exam where
they live.

Mr. Xi and, particularly, Prime Minister Li Keqiang have argued that
faster urbanization should become an engine of economic growth
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/asia/chinas-great-uprooting-moving
-250-million-into-cities.html> in the coming decades. Already, 174 million
of China’s 1.3 billion people are rural migrants working away from their
hometowns, Yang Zhiming, a labor and social welfare official, said at the
news conference. Many economists say the barriers deter consumption by
migrant workers, who are afraid to spend more of their savings.

The government document released on Wednesday brought together
commitments, some already announced, to steadily and selectively lift some
of these barriers. Some cities have already implemented such changes,
including formally erasing the division between urban and rural
registration for local residents. But experts have said such changes do
not mean much unless welfare, housing and other policies are also changed
to overcome persistent inequalities.

In small cities with urban populations of up to one million, people with
steady jobs and housing who meet requirements for welfare payments will be
allowed to register as local residents. Similar rules will apply to larger
cities, with stricter limits.
But the proposals say that for the biggest cities, with urban populations
of five million or more, the number of newcomers must be stringently
controlled, and a points system will be used to ration out household
registration opportunities.

The government also said, as it has before, that it will try to ease
barriers that deny places in schools, health care, family planning and
other public services to residents who do not have local household
registration papers. Many city governments have resisted such changes, and
urban residents also fear the erosion of their privileges.

“A major reason why people want household registration in a city is for
their children’s education,” said Professor Lu of Renmin University. “The
value in a hukou is mostly in education and health care resources, and
cities want to limit who gets those resources.”