The quest of most rural people for an urban hukou, as I understand it, is a search for identity. This notion includes many aspects of human dignity, such as pride, wealth, equality and respect, which rural migrants once believed they could get from China’s urbanization.

But the tragedy of China’s urbanization is that rural migrants are in the city rather than of the city. They are the most likely workers to be laid off in the competitive labor market. They cannot catch up with soaring house prices. They have to pay much more to send their kids to school in the city. Even as they desperately pursue an urban identity, they find themselves further and further away from their original goal.

So if they can get a sense of security and welfare in their rural hometowns, why bother going to the cities? The implication of college students giving up urban hukou is simple: City identity is no longer as attractive as it once was. But potentially, this process of deurbanization can help release the pressure of big cities, and raise the quality of life in both rural and urban areas. 

In August, Kam Wing Chan of the University of Washington wrote in the East Asia Forum about the complexities of China’s urbanization process and its unrealized promises of economic growth. See also recent CDT coverage of China’s rapid urbanization and the plight of the rural poor left stranded as urbanites race ahead.

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Post tags: college students, hukou, labor markets, migrant, rural development, urbanization, wealth gap, welfare
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Due to the massive urbanization process, the traditional pattern of agrarian life in which men farm and women engage in the weaving and spinning has been tweaked in many rural regions in China. However, restrictions and discriminatory policies on family register (hukou) system, housing, education and other social security have rendered it very difficult for an entire family to relocate from the country and gain a foothold in the city. In an effort to bootstrap themselves out of poverty, many peasants have to embark on an arduous adventure alone in the cities and leave their families behind in the villages.

… According to a study by China Agriculture University, currently 87 million people are left behind in rural areas, which include 20 million children, 20 million senior citizens and 47 million wives of migrant workers ….

The Mid-Autumn Day, a traditional Chinese festival to celebrate harvest and family reunion under the full moon on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, falls on September 12 this year. During the ten days leading up to the festival, Liu Jie, a photographer with Xinhua News Agency, trudged from the north of Shaanxi province to its south, and took dozens of family photos of rural residents, where the backbones of the families are missing, and empty chairs sit in their places.

The image of an empty chair became politically loaded following last year’s Nobel Prize ceremony, in which a seat was left unoccupied to mark the absence of imprisoned prizewinner Liu Xiaobo. The Southern Metropolis Daily raised eyebrows soon afterwards with an enigmatic cover image showing three empty chairs and five cranes.

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Post tags: children, elderly, hukou, Liu Xiaobo, migration, rural areas, rural migration, rural women
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China’s capital city ranked 72nd out of the world’s 140 most livable cities in Economist Intelligence Unit’s semi-annual survey, released earlier this week, upping Shanghai, Dalian and Shenzhen. Hangzhou, known as a picturesque retreat for the rich, didn’t crack the list.

Suzhou, in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, came in second among Chinese cities, at 73rd place, followed by Tianjin, on the northeast coast, at 74th place. Shanghai ranked 79th; Shenzhen, 82nd; and Dalian, 85th.

The ranking was greeted with widespread ridicule and disbelief: The Financial Times’ Kathrin Hille felt that the EIU’s conclusion “would be funny if it wasn’t so sad …. Perhaps more than any other city in China, the capital is … a place where only a minority of residents enjoy full economic and social rights.” A prominent example is the ongoing demolition of many of Beijing’s schools for the children of migrant workers, for whom mainstream education is generally inaccessible. From The Economist:

China’s system of household registration, or hukou, makes it very difficult for migrants to gain access to urban education and health care. But the urban economy relies on migrant labour, and some cities have been much more adroit than Beijing in providing schools. Shanghai claims last year to have become the first city in China to provide free education for all migrant children, mostly in state-run schools, with some in subsidised private ones.

Beijing is far less keen to embrace them. Chu Zhaohui, of the Ministry of Education’s Central Institute for Educational Research, says Beijing could afford to accommodate all of its more than 400,000 migrant children, some 40,000 of whom have little choice but to use unlicensed schools. But he says the city worries that it is growing unsustainably large. Figures last year showed that Beijing’s population, including nearby towns and villages, had reached 20m, up nearly 45% on a decade earlier, and exceeding the city government’s estimate for 2020.

The fear of a soaring population has already inspired officials to attempt, a few months ago, to close down, again “on safety grounds”, cheap accommodation favoured by many migrants. Tian Kun, a lawyer who has been trying to help the migrants, says that forcing them out will exacerbate social tensions in the capital. The parents of the school-deprived children, he says, “are filled with hate”.

See also ‘China Takes Aim at Rural Influx‘, via CDT.

Ai Weiwei recently wrote at Newsweek that “cities really are mental conditions. Beijing is a nightmare. A constant nightmare.” The article was ripped from hard copies of the magazine in China, but remained accessible online. From The Telegraph:

“Ai Weiwei’s piece for Newsweek, his first in defiance of the Chinese gag order on him, was a cry from the heart in which he likened Beijing to a vast prison. It ran on the last page of the magazine, and the Chinese censors ripped that page out in every issue,” Tunku Varadarajan, the editor of Newsweek International told The Telegraph ….

“We had flagged the piece on the cover, too, but they left the cover alone, so it delights me that astute readers will have seen the coverline, noted the ripped page, and then gone straight to the Web to read Ai’s courageous piece,” added Mr Varadarajan.

Also on the negative side, though more mundanely, Beijing topped IBM’s “commuter pain” list last year, level with Mexico City.

On The Economist’s Prospero blog, however, a more optimistic Q&A with Tom Scocca delves into his experiences in the city, which formed the basis of a book, ‘Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future‘:

What was the most jarring thing you noticed about the transformation of Beijing?

The government made communal, substantive changes to the infrastructure—new subway lines appeared, giant developments went up—but there was also the hilariously superficial stuff. In 2008 smooth, greyish-silver, aluminium panels would go up over all the storefronts to just square off the building alignment. These weird scrims were put over air conditioning units to unify building facades. It was the little details, impossible to worry about and difficult to make any real headway against, that they set out to fix.

One thing that really did happen was with the escalators. The convention of stand-right walk-left had not existed at all so they painted a line right down the middle of the escalator and put up signs. For some reason, with that, people just picked it up. Maybe New York should take note?

What makes Beijing the capital city of the future? What works about it?

It’s a combination of things, some good and some not so good. China lacks a certain stability unlike America, which has just settled into this almost Panglossian outlook: we have the best rail system that we could therefore it’s stupid to try and make high-speed rail work; we can’t change our health-care system because it might be worse. But this is not the history of the United States. Most of America’s history consisted of stitching stars on the flag as fast as we could—but what would happen now if someone proposed that we should add a state? At the moment we have a perfect round number of states. It is like we’ve achieved the end of history. In China I don’t think they’ve ever had the notion that they’ve reached the end of history.

Sources:

What’s the Capital of the World? – More Intelligent Life
Washington, Capital of the World – More Intelligent Life
Beijing, Capital of the World – More Intelligent Life
Delhi, Capital of the World – More Intelligent Life
Beijing: China’s Most Livable City? – China Real Time Report – WSJ
Beijing: the most liveable city in China, for whom? – FT.com
Beijing’s migrant workers: School’s out – The Economist
China censors Ai Wei Wei’s Newsweek interview – Telegraph
Mexico City, Beijing top list for worst ‘commuter pain’ – latimes.com
The Q&A: Tom Scocca, author – The Economist

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Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, Beijing 2008 Olympics, cities, dalian, Hangzhou, hukou, London, migrant education, new york city, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Tianjin, urban rural divide
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Though the quality of education they offer may be questionable, private schools like Red Star are often the only option for the children of low-skilled migrant laborers, who for the most part are ineligible for the free public education available to legal Beijing residents. Known derisively as “waidi ren,” or outsiders, the migrants are the cut-rate muscle that makes it eminently affordable for better-off Chinese to dine out, hire full-time nannies and ride new subway lines in places like Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen ….

To manage the huge population flows — and its own fears — the government relies on an internal passport and registration system dating from the Mao years that ties access to education, health care and pensions to the birthplace of a person’s parent. The hukou system, as it is called, has created a two-tiered population in many Chinese cities: those with legal residency and those without.

Though urbanization is a central tenet of the party’s latest five-year economic plan for the country, Mr. Chan says, the 250 million rural migrants who are expected to move to cities in the next 15 years could become a source of social unrest unless the hukou system is reformed. “Having that many second-class citizens in Chinese cities is dangerous,” he said ….

Resistance [to reform] comes from factory owners who want migrant laborers to remain insecure and cheap to exploit, and from urban elites who fear an even greater deluge of migrants from the countryside if it becomes easier to live in the city. But the most formidable opposition may be that of local governments, which worry about paying for the health care, education and other benefits that migrants and their children would qualify for as legal residents.

Meanwhile, Caixin reported that education spending in Beijing is soaring, with some middle schools charging up to 87,000 RMB a year, and parents spending an additional 30-80,000 RMB on private tutoring.

For more on the migrant schooling issue, see ‘Migrant School Demolished, Parents Furious‘ and ‘Yu Jianrong on Closing of Migrant Schools‘, via CDT. Internet cafés have become an unlikely alternative source of childcare for migrant workers, while also providing some opportunities for informal education: see Tricia Wang’s presentation ‘Sleeping in Internet Cafes: The Next 300 Million Chinese Users‘, also via CDT.

Yesterday it was reported that a staff member at a daycare centre for children of migrant workers in Shanghai had attacked eight children with a boxcutter.

Sources:

China Takes Aim at Rural Influx – NYTimes.com
Survey: Beijing Middle School Education Spending Soars – Caixin online

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Post tags: hukou, migrant education, schools, urban rural divide
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Parents of migrant students were dismayed to find that over ten of the school’s buildings had been razed to the ground on August 15, only three days before the New Hope School for migrant children in northwest Beijing was set to start classes. The parents were not informed prior to the event.The local authorities demolished the school after its contracts allegedly expired. A school official said that some buildings had already been razed while the government had not yet notified them about some others. There was no time to inform parents before the destruction, the school representative said. The school has over 790 students, and parents are worried about how to keep their students in school, since enrolling at public schools is complicated, difficult, and even impossible for some parents due to stringent regulations. The New Hope School had specifically served the children of migrant laborers, who historically have not been allowed to attend schools in Beijing because it is not their official residence.

The Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin notes that many other migrant school demolitions loom, and that proposed alternatives are inaccessible and inadequate:

Around 30 private schools, set up to provide a basic education for the children of migrant workers in Beijing, have been ordered to close, leaving nearly 30,000 students with an uncertain future as the new school year begins, the Beijing News reported today.

The affected schools are all located in the outlying districts of Daxing, Chaoyang and Haidian that have been home to migrant worker families for many years, even decades, but are now under increasing pressure from property developers as the city expands ever outward.

Most of the district government closure orders issued in June cited illegal construction, illegal operation and safety concerns as the reasons for closure, although many schools had been operating technically illegally for many years without any government intervention.

For context, see Millions of Chinese rural migrants denied education for their children, from The Guardian last year:

Despite spending more than half his life in Beijing, Hu does not enjoy the same access to health, education and social services as his neighbours. And because the hukou – registration – is inherited, neither do his children.

“I wish my kids could go to a state school,” says Hu. “Parents always wish their children could receive a better education.”

The contradictions of the hukou system, designed for a 1950s planned economy, become more painful with every year of China’s development. About 140 million rural migrants are now working in the cities, where average incomes are more than three times than those of the countryside. Migrants have fuelled the country’s spectacular growth but not reaped the benefits. And once they become parents, they face an unpalatable choice.

Fifty-eight million children are left behind in the countryside by parents who hope that relatives will raise them lovingly. Another 19 million remain in the cities – where they are, in effect, second-class citizens. Both groups have poorer academic performance and more behavioural problems than their peers.

Sources:

Migrant School Demolished, Parents Furious – Caixin online
Nearly 30 migrant schools in Beijing ordered to close – China Labour Bulletin
Millions of Chinese rural migrants denied education for their children – The Guardian

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Post tags: demolition, hukou, migrant education, schools
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The crucial point is that rural residents can move to the city, but without an urban residence permit—known as an urban hukou—they are confined to the margins of city life. According to Professor Kam Wing Chan, an expert on China’s urbanization at the University of Washington, the share of China’s population that has urban residence rights is around 35%, substantially below the 50% of the population that live in the cities.

The 171 million migrant workers who fall into that hole have an average wage of around $3,600 a year, compared with an average of $5,700 for registered urban workers. That is more than they earned in the countryside. But although they might have built China’s glittering new residential compounds, living in dormitories in twilight zones on the edges of the city they are hardly likely to buy an apartment in one of them ….

China’s move toward a more urban society is real. But without reform to the hukou system to bring migrants into the mainstream of urban opportunity, a bigger city population won’t be the straightforward driver of consumption growth that many take as a given.

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Post tags: hukou, urban population, urban rural divide, urbanization
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The Asian Development Bank released its Asia Development Outlook 2010 on Tuesday, raising China’s GDP growth forecast to 9.6 percent, up from the 8.9 percent estimate made last September.

Strong growth could lead to risk of inflation and asset bubbles the bank said. The consumer price index may average 3.6 percent in 2010 and 3.2 percent in 2011.

“The stress on investment has also led to overcapacity in some industries and unsustainable use of natural resources,” the report said. “Expanding investment is relatively easy in a system where state-owned enterprises are fed with substantial amounts of public investment that they promptly channel into expansion. Increasing private consumption, in contrast, requires raising purchasing power and changing saving habits across the population.”

The report also stated that China’s high GDP growth rates over the past three decades have not been accompanied by any increases in employment generation. This has led to “large labor surpluses, mainly in rural areas, compounded by rigidities in the labor market.” The ADB advocated that China address this issue through a profound reform of the labor market, including a relaxation of the hukou system.

Here are some specific excerpts from the Asia Development Outlook 2010′s section on China. Restructuring the economy for long-term stability and developing a better service sector seem to be its main recommendations. From Asian Development Bank:

Increased labor mobility and a better educated and trained workforce would also help mitigate the impact on the economy of the aging of the population. Aging is particularly challenging in the PRC, because it is happening at a relatively low level of per capita income.

The sustainability of the current high energy-consuming and environment-unfriendly growth model is doubtful. A more sustainable model would be more reliant on technology, innovation, and skills. That could be achieved by increasing spending on research and development, which at present is below the government’s target. Large investments in education and vocational training are also needed.

Wide-ranging policy changes are needed to facilitate the transition to a more services-oriented growth model. These include improving the regulatory framework, changing production incentives, further liberalizing the finance sector, reforming the labor market, and investing more in education and training.

A larger services sector could absorb much of the surplus labor from agriculture and manufacturing, as well as a significant share of new workers entering the labor force. Reforming the hukou system would maximize employment gains, as would other policies that speed up the move of the population to cities. To minimize the impact of job losses caused by reducing policy incentives for low-skilled manufacturing, it would be necessary to implement supportive measures, including large investments in education, vocational training, and social safety nets.

The ADB expects China’s economy to grow by slightly less, at 9.1%, for 2011.

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Post tags: Asian development bank, chinese economy, economic growth rates, education reform, hukou, inflation, services
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The permanent population in Beijing has increased by 500,000 every year during the recent times, Zhao Lei, vice director of Beijing municipal commission of development and reform told the paper. As an economic center, the capital has provided more job opportunities and higher wages, which is a main attraction for the population influx, he said.

However, frictions between the massive population and the environmental resources have become increasingly significant during these years, including traffic congestions, lack of medical service and education resources. Therefore, Beijing will improve its management of the population and keep the household registration system, the paper quoted Zhao as saying.

Debate over hukou reform has been prevalent in recent years. Many say it is urgent, especially as a new generations of better educated migrant workers come to dominate the workforce. To learn about the hukou system, see here. To read more about reforming the hukou system, see here.

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Zheng Yuanjie is psychologically unstable

I am sixty- five years old, I have a Beijing hukou (household registration), I am a citizen of Beijing. I have a Hukou Record and National Registration Identity Card. However I have never had a Voter Registration Card.

Since China is holding the yearly National People’s Congress now, I have checked the “Election Law of the People’s Republic of China.” There are only three types of people who are not eligible to have the Voter Registration Card:
1. Younger than eighteen years old
2. A convicted criminal who is deprived of political rights
3. Psychologically unstable person

I am neither 1 nor 2; so the only reason that I have never had a Voter Registration Card must be the third one.

Beijing came out with a policy this year that only outsiders who have paid taxes for five consecutive years are allowed to buy cars and houses. My question is, will outsiders who have paid taxes continuously for five years be eligible to stand in the election for deputy to the National People’s Congress?

Following is the cover of yesterday’s “Beijing Youth Weekly”. Indeed it looks like I am a psychologically unstable person who is not eligible for Voter Registration Card.

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Post tags: bloggers, Election law, hukou, npc 2011, voting rights, zheng yuanjie
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The economies of China and India [according to Citigroup’s Willem Buiter] will together be four times as large as the United States, restoring the historic order of Asian dominance before Europe’s navies burst on the scene in the 16th Century. Panta Rei, says Dr Buiter: all is in flux; nothing will remain the same ….

Having rid themselves of calamitous nonsense – Maoism, the Hindu model, and other variants of central planning or autarky – and having at last achieved a “threshold level” of law and governance, nothing should stop them, or so goes the argument ….

HSBC’s report also sketches an era of unparalleled prosperity, yet the West does not sink into oblivion. China overtakes the US, but only just, and then loses momentum ….

Americans remain three times richer than the Chinese in 2050. The US economy still outstrips India by two-and-a-half times. This is an entirely different geo-strategic outcome.

Demography, naturally, is one of the main factors underlying these scenarios. At Reason, Shikha Dalmia contrasts China’s hukou restrictions and population controls with India’s more liberal policies, speculating on their likely consequences:

… India’s infrastructure issues, while difficult, are nothing compared to the problems China faces in assimilating its migrants. That’s because half-a-century of social engineering has decimated China’s civil society, something that will be much harder to rebuild than roads and power lines.

China’s one-child policy has undermined the safety net that the elderly normally rely on in traditional societies. This is one problem India does not have thanks to its democracy that put a decisive end to its brief flirtation with draconian population control through enforced sterilization in the 1970s. Hence, India’s tightly-knit extended family structure is largely intact, a gift of freedom to the country’s elderly.

Since China no longer has such a private safety net, its aging migrants will need a public one—just what hukou denies them. If China fails to extend hukou benefits, its large and disaffected underclass of deracinated, rural population might become a political tinderbox, ready to explode ….

China, then, has not yet fully absorbed the consequences of destroying its civil society—and India hasn’t yet fully reaped the rewards of letting its flourish. So when it comes to looking after the most vulnerable, appearances aside, India’s pell-mell democracy might yet outperform China’s hyper-rational autocracy.

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Post tags: demographics, hukou, India, population control, United States
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