THE SYSTEM THAT DIVIDES CHINA

Growing popular pressure pushes for deep reform of the Chinese household registration, or hukou, system.

By Carl Minzner


The language was blunt; the tone direct. "We hope that decades of Chinese government maladministration can end with this generation. . . . Let the next generation enjoy the sacred constitutional guarantees of freedom, democracy and equality."



A press statement by overseas Chinese dissident groups? A human rights report by the U.S. State Department? No. This was a unique joint editorial published March 1 by 13 independent-leaning Chinese media outlets, spread across 11 provinces and cities, in the lead-up to the annual session of the national legislature, which concluded Sunday. The target of their criticism: the Chinese household registration, or hukou, system. The editorial is but one sign of the growing popular pressure for deep reform of the system.



Established in the 1950s, the household registration system originally served Maoist goals of population control and state economic planning. It locked Chinese citizens to a particular place of residence. It classified them as urban or rural, agricultural or nonagricultural. And it granted preferential treatment -- on food rations, housing and education -- to urban industrial workers.



Post-1978 economic liberalization has eroded many of these restrictions, such as travel. As anyone who has ever attempted to shove their way onto an overcrowded train in China during the Lunar New Year travel season can attest, average Chinese citizens enjoy (and exercise) massive freedom of physical movement throughout the country.



But residency status remains tightly linked to a range of rights and privileges, particularly urban social benefits. Most rural migrants to Chinese cities are unable to obtain equal public services such as healthcare and schooling for their children. And because residency status is hereditary, with limited channels to change one's status, this disparity risks hardening into a permanent divide. Generations of migrant children born and raised in Chinese cities might grow up as a legally excluded urban underclass.



MORE AT  http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-minzner16-2010mar16,0,4178259.story