Fresh calls for Hukou reform in China

Every Chinese citizen is required to be registered in his or her home town. This means, he or she can access social benefits, such as free healthcare, education and welfare only at that location.

The system called 'Hukou' has functioned well for people, who stay at one place. But it has negatively affected millions of Chinese migrant workers who leave the countryside to seek work in the cities.

In urban areas migrant workers get a temporary residency permit, which they have to have extended every year.

Recently, in a report about China, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development or OECD criticized the Hukou system for increasing social inequality.

Wang Feiling, a political expert at the Sam Nunn School of international affairs in Atlanta, USA agrees. He says the Hukou system is pushing China towards a two-class society:

"The problem is a great discrimination against significant members of Chinese citizens especially the citizens living in the country side and also in remote regions," he says. "The system creates many social and economic injustices."

Reform is challenging

Reforming the Hukou system is, however, difficult. It helps the Chinese authorities to keep an eye on the flow of the migrant workforce. Many fear if the Hukou system is abolished, millions of people will leave their villages and migrate to the cities, which will then not be able to finance their social benefits.

In comparison to other emerging countries, such as India and Brazil, the Chinese cities have fewer shanty town areas, or slums. Thomas Scharping, an expert on Modern Chinese studies at the University of Cologne, says there are two ways of looking at the problem:

"The freedom to choose your residence and workplace is good for the economy. But on the other side of the coin you will also see social problems."

Within China as well, Hukou is considered unfair. In an article in Qiushi magazine last month, Zhou Yongkang, the general secretary of the Communist Party's Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, called for reform of the Hukou system to be speeded up. He said that every citizen who has a house in the city should have a Hukou.

But the idea doesn't appeal to expert Wang Feiling. He says it will only aggravate social problems. "Mr Zhou Yongkang's suggestion primarily benefits the rich, which is kind of a minority in the Chinese society," he says. "It will also cause an internal capital drain. It will further take capital away from poor rural areas to major urban centers. People will invest money in major urban centers which are already very rich."

Tackling social inequality

Wang Feiling is also not in favor of abolishing the Hukou system. He thinks it is not politically possible simply because the megacities have no reason to change the system. Moreover the city residents will also not give up their privileges. Wang Feiling has another suggestion:

"The most idealistic way of reforming the Hukou system, I think, is not to abolish it overnight rather to empower the discriminated people to let the peasants, the people in the remote areas to organize themselves, to give them the private property right of a land, for example, to enrich them. Therefore, they will have less reasons to migrate to big cities."

Whatever happens to the reform of the Hukou system, it is clear that tackling the social inequality between the city and the villages is going to be one of the main tasks of the Chinese government in the next decade.

Author: Christoph Ricking/du
Editor: Grahame Lucas