The Beijing government has decided to abolish strict rules controlling migrant workers. From China Daily:
Beijing announced the end of its rules limiting the life and work of immigrants Friday. While praising the local government’s magnanimity, experts also worried that the capital will face a population expansion in the near future.
Deputies to the 19th session of the 12th Beijing Municipal People’s Congress agreed, after serious discussion, to annul the city’s 10-year-old rules that limited immigrants’ access to jobs and housing…
Though good news to local immigrants, the abrogation of the rules has prompted worries that the city will suffer a population explosion. The registered migrant population in Beijing was 3.6 million at the end of 2004, about one quarter of its total population.
A previous Newsweek article on this issue is here. A 2002 Human Rights in China report, “Institutionalized Exclusion: The tenuous legal status of internal migrants in China’s major cities,” by Sophia Woodman, is here.
