Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
24 October 2011
Migrant Control in China
Hundreds of millions of migrant Chinese workers
are denied rights thanks to a registration
system that dates back 2,000 years
A Canadian in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia can move to North Battleford, Saskatchewan anytime he or she has a mind to. No permission from authorities is needed and health, pension, employment insurance, and other social benefits travel to the new location. Just hitch up the buggy and off we go. Not so in China.
China’s Internal Passports
Under China’s hukou system everybody has what amounts 
to an internal passport (left)
that specifies to which community that person belongs. If someone wants to move from
a village to a city they must get permission.
Whether or not a person gets the go-
As Keith B. Richburg reports in the Washington Post (August 15, 2010), China’s Communist masters used the system “to keep poor rural farmers from flooding into the cities. It remains a key tool for keeping track of people and monitoring those the government considers “troublemakers.’ ”
Internal Migration in China
The lack of approval to relocate doesn’t stop people from moving around within China. Known as the “floating population,” there were 210 million internal migrants in China in 2009.
Xinhua is the Chinese government’s official news agency. On June 27, 2010 it reported
that the country’s number of migrant workers “will hit 350 million by 2050 if government
policies remain unchanged.” The economic downtown of 2009 slowed migration a little
but “the long-
Two Classes of People
While the lack of documentation doesn’t stop people moving it does makes life difficult for them. A villager without an urban hukou is not entitled to most government services such as education beyond the elementary level, subsidized housing, or medical services.
China Daily reports (May 21, 2007) that the “hukou system effectively divides the population in two – ‘the haves’ (urban households) and ‘the have not’s’ (rural households).” Others have called it China’s apartheid.
Richburg points out some more disadvantages: people living away from their registered home “must travel to their home towns to get a marriage license, apply for a passport, or take the national university entrance exam.”
Reform of Hukou System on the Way?
There are many critics of the hukou system beyond those who suffer from its inbuilt inequalities. Business does not like the program. Writing for the East Asia Forum (August 14, 2010) Jason Young calls it a “Blunt tool [that] increasingly threaten(s) to dampen the growing dynamism of Chinese society and economy.”
There has been some chatter in recent years about the government easing the hukou
system and there has been a little bit of tinkering. Guangzhou (right), Shanghai,
and other cities have made it simpler for migrants to get local hukou documentation,
but the national program remains largely unchanged.
For the estimated one third of Beijing’s population of 22 million who live without a Beijing hukou abolishing the system altogether would be welcome news.
Sources
“China’s ‘hukou’ System Deemed Outdated as a way of Controlling Access to Services.” Keith B. Richburg Washington Post, August 15, 2010.
“China’s ‘Floating Population’ Exceeds 210m.” Xinhua, June 27, 2010.
“Hukou ‘an Obstacle to Market Economy.’ ” Rong Jiaojiao, China Daily, May 21, 2007.
“China’s Hukou System Impinges on Development and Civil Rights,” Jason Young, East Asia Forum, August 14, 2010.
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“In a week-
China Daily, 2007