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China's Household Registration System under Reform
Abstract
China's household registration system is the central element in a policy of rapid industrialization with low urbanization. Figures on the non-agricultural population show that the system was initially successful, but less so during the 1980s. As a result, a number of reforms were introduced, which are described in some detail here. The registration system must be viewed as playing three interrelated roles: it is an instrument of development policy, aimed at keeping urban populations small while fostering industrial development; a social institution which rigidly divides Chinese society into a rural and an urban segment; and an instrument of state control, which the state employs to cultivate client groups. This article further argues that the contradiction between the need to adapt the system to changing realities, dictated by its developmental role, and the tenacity of the vested interests inherent in the social institutional role of the system, form a major obstacle to fundamental reform.
... However, the hukou system, which was used by the state to control migration, was then yet to be reformed. For any geographic movement an official approval for a corresponding change in the place of hukou registration was required; otherwise such movement was deemed illegal and would cause the loss of access to the then still state-controlled daily necessities (Chan and Zhang 1999;Mallee 1995). ...
... The institutional obstacles to internal movement began to be lifted when the reform entered the mid-1980s. As the market developed, the state's complete control over the access to daily necessities was eroded; and in 1985 geographic movement away from the place of hukou registration was allowed (Cai 1999;Chan 2001;Liang 2001;Mallee 1995;Poncet 2006). Along with the removal of these obstacles, the push and pull forces of migration also grew. ...
... La fermeture d'un grand nombre d'usines et le brusque accroissement du viande) et aux vêtements (coton et autres tissus), qui ne sont accessibles que par des coupons utilisables exclusivement dans une localité donnée. Bien que dans un premier temps le système demeure assez flexible, à partir de 1960, à cause du désordre causé par le Grand Bond en avant et pour regagner contrôle sur l'économie et la société, le système du rationnement ainsi que du hùkǒu sont mis en oeuvre de manière stricte (Parish et Whyte 1978 ;Cheng et Selden 1994 ;Mallee 1995b). 13 Les années allant de 1959 à 1961, décrites comme les « trois années de grande famine », génèrent un nombre de victimes estimé à quelques 50 millions de personnes (Becker 1996, 272). ...
... Ce bouleversement de la mobilité interne s'intensifie au cours de la Révolution culturelle (1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976) avec l'envoi forcé à la campagne d'une autre catégorie sociale, celle des jeunes instruits (知识青年 zhīshi qíngnián) nés en ville et qui nécessitent, selon le régime communiste, d'être rééduqués et affranchis des idéaux bourgeois par les paysans 19 . Au cours de cette campagne, intitulée « monter à la montagne et descendre à la campagne » (上山下乡 shàngshān xiàxiāng) qui perdure durant les onze années de la Révolution Culturelle, 17 millions de jeunes diplômés sont transférés en zone rurale (Hu et Zhang 1984 ;Mallee 2000 ;Shen 2014), notamment dans les régions les plus reculées de l'ouest et du centre de la Chine 20 . Exception faite de ces vagues migratoires forcées, la mise en marche de la nouvelle structure socio-économique des « communes 16 Le terme chinois míngōng (民工) se traduit littéralement par l'expression « ouvrier-paysans ». 17 A la fin de juin 1963, 26 millions de ces travailleurs avaient quitté les villes (Shen 2014, 338). ...
Cette thèse traite de l’ancrage résidentiel des migrants chinois de l’intérieur au sein de leur processus d’intégration en ville. Compte tenu de la centralité du marché immobilier résidentiel dans les stratégies de croissance de « l’État développeur » chinois et des fonctions économiques et symboliques que l’habitat recouvre pour les sociétés urbaines, le prisme de l’ancrage résidentiel apparaît comme une entrée incontournable pour explorer la manière dont les migrants de l’intérieur participent à la reconfiguration socio-spatiale de l’espace urbain. À la croisée entre la géographie humaine, la géographie urbaine et la sociologie politique, cette thèse prend pour étude de cas la ville de Zhuhai (Guangdong), où une enquête de terrain a été menée pendant 2 ans. La méthodologie a recouru à l’observation participante, à l’enquête ethnographique, aux entretiens semi-directifs ainsi qu’à l’analyse des politiques publiques. Plus de 140 personnes ont été interrogées, dont 128 migrants, une dizaine de fonctionnaires, des instances parapubliques, des promoteurs publics et des petits propriétaires. L’analyse a porté sur les modalités à la fois formelles et informelles des processus d’intégration urbaine au travers d’un cadre conceptuel basé sur une « approche intégrée de l’informalité ». Les résultats mettent en lumière un modèle d’intégration sélectif et hautement compétitif. Ce modèle, qui renforce la différenciation socio-spatiale de l’espace urbain, produit des interstices d’informalité dans lesquels les migrants les plus faiblement qualifiés élaborent leurs propres stratégies résidentielles et d’intégration urbaine, accédant parfois, bien que de manière informelle, à la propriété.
... Almost no rural resident could move to urban areas during 1958 to 1978 because the rigid hukou system was designed to strictly control population flows into cities. The initial hukou reform took place in 1988, establishing a mechanism for rural migrants to obtain legal temporary residence (LTR) in urban areas (Mallee 1995). After rural migrants could obtain LTR, they became better able to establish networks to facilitate the job search in distant labour markets (e.g. ...
... Munshi 2003). The number of rural migrants moving to work in urban areas has soared since the hukou system underwent further relaxation in the 1990s (Mallee 1995). Estimates using the 1 per cent sample from the 1990 and 2000 rounds of the Population Census and the 1995 1 per cent population survey suggest that the inter-county migrant population grew from just over 20 million in 1990 to 45 million in 1995 and 78 million by 2000 (Liang and Ma 2004). ...
This open access book looks critically at how education, migration and development intersect and interact to shape people, communities, societies, ideas, values, and action at local, national and international levels. Written by leading scholars and practitioners based in Belgium, China, Columbia, Ethiopia, India, Lebanon, Mongolia, South Africa, the UK and the USA, the book introduces the reader to how such interactions play out through a series of case study examples drawn from across the globe. It explores education in all its forms and raises critical questions about its purpose and value in different low- and middle-income contexts and settings, in the context of migration. The contributors engage with the multiple reasons why people move, and also consider how people and societies are shaped not just by the movement of humans but also of ideas, concepts and values across different national and international contexts. The chapters cover a range of topics and themes including gender and feminisation, dignity, internal migration, migrant camps, museum pedagogies, migrant teachers and migrant identities. The book decentres dominant theories and ideas emerging in global north scholarship and prioritises empirical studies conducted in relation to low- and middle- income country contexts written by scholars from those contexts where possible.
... Some other researchers notice the usage of hukou information in political management (Dutton, 1992;Wang, 2004), although the number of studies on political functions of the hukou system is much smaller. These functions are contended to serve the ultimate goal of rapid economic growth and stable political order (Chan, 1992;Mallee, 1995;Wang, 2004Wang, , 2005. (3) Much scholarly attention has been paid to impacts of the hukou system on social stratification and regional disparities. ...
... As revealed in previous studies, economic growth and political stability are two key concerns and ultimate aims of the hukou system (e.g. Chan, 1992;Mallee, 1995;Wang, 2004). The rest of this section will examine the dynamics and continuality in the aims behind the hukou system in different periods. ...
The Chinese hukou system has been a hot topic in China study for decades. It not only restricts access to state-sponsored benefits (such as food and housing provision) in pre-reform China, but continues to influence the local-led urbanization in post-reform era. However, few studies have explained why this highly exploitative system persists in China. This paper tries to contribute some insights to interpretation of this issue based on Foucault’s concept of governmentality. It is argued that Chinese hukou system is actually a power relation consisting of a series of governmental technologies based on differentiation, surveillance and calculation in pursuit of economic growth and political stability. The governmental techniques and rationality within the Chinese institutional system make the hukou system persist in modern China.
... Le contrôle sur la migration rural-urbaine en Chine a été principalement réalisé par la mise en place d'un système d'enregistrement des ménages (Hukou), au moins jusqu'à la veille des réformes économiques (Mallee, 1995 . De plus, à partir de 1963, le statut de Hukou a été associé à l'approvisionnement des céréales quotidiennes. ...
... Depuis les années 1980, les restrictions sur la mobilité de la population se sont relâchées progressivement (Mallee, 1995) ...
This dissertation studies urbanization and city growth in China. It is composed of tow parts. The first part begins with a review of theoretic models of urbanization in development economics, and then describes stylised facts of China's urbanization process. Problems of urban population measures, the unique industrialization strategies as well as institutional changes that determine urban growth are examined. The second part studies the link between city growth and agglomeration economies. The concept of agglomeration economies is clarified before we carry out empirical tests with a panel of about 150 Chinese cities in the 1990s. Then, the evolution of China's city size distribution is examined using different analysis approaches such as Zipf's law, Markov transition matrix. Finally, we estimate the determinants of city growth in the 1990s.
Our finding suggests that urbanization process had been delayed in China, due to particular strategies of industrialisation (heavy industry bias before the reforms and rural industrialization after the reforms) and incomplete features of factor markets (labour and land); in particular, restrictive policies make that cities are not large enough to exploit gains related to agglomeration economies. With the deepening of its economic reforms, China would continue its structural transition from rural to urban society, and urban growth would be one of the driving forces of China's economic growth. Policies aimed at promoting urbanization and growth should consist in relaxing the restrictions on city size, establishing complete product and factor market, and improving urban governance, especially the provision of urban infrastructures.
... Since the early 1990s, China has introduced various measures to further liberalize the agricultural markets and reduce the number of commodities in the state controlled procurement system (Mallee, 1995)). "In 1993, more than 90 percent of all agricultural produce was sold at market-determined prices, a clear indication of the degree to which China's agriculture had been transformed from a command-and-control system to a largely free-market one" (Fan, et al, 2002)). ...
China has achieved a great success in rural development. After 30 years of effort, the number of poor people in China's rural areas has been decreased to 26.88 million by the end of 2010 from 250 million in 1978, And the government has been increasing its investment in the rural areas and agricultural sector, and of course all this have been reflected on the level of development in the rural areas. Rural development in Egypt has a long history traced back to the nineteenth century. This study was undertaken to analyze rural development Strategies (RDS) in Egypt and China. The goal of the study is to understand some of the underlying strategies that have been implemented in the two countries during the period 1949 to 2007, and also to identify the current situation in both countries through the case study method by analyzing the rural development situation in two villages, Kafr wahb village in Egypt and Shijiaqiao in China to examine the positives and negatives aspects in both villages.
... According to a recent report on Chinese migrant population development, the rural-urban migrants exploded from 37 million in 1994 to 244 million in 2017 (Department of Service and Management of Migrant Population National Health and Family Planning Commission of China, 2018). The majority of these migrants decide to leave their children behind due to the Hukou system which institutionally excluded their children from accessing state-sponsored social welfare programs such as public primary education (Mallee, 1995). Consequently, this largescale migration created a large population of left-behind children (LBC). ...
The present study aims to investigate the impacts of father-child communication on the mental health of left-behind children (LBC), and the role of maternal migration and mother-child communication in this correlations. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Anhui, China, from April 2018 to March 2019. Among 5253 valid responses, 1599 LBC who self-reported that their fathers were migrants at the time of the survey were included in the present study. There are three major findings: first, maternal migration can negatively influence LBC’s father-child communication frequency and quality; second, both higher father-child communication frequency and quality can promote LBC’s mental health; third, mother-child communication can enhance the protective effects of father-child communication quality on LBC’s mental health. Thus, we propose that, to promote the mental health of children with both parents migrating, it is of great importance for mothers and fathers to realize that direct father-child communication matters. And more direct father-child communication should be encouraged for children with both parents migrating.
... In China, parental migration for work and parental divorce are two major reasons causing parent-child separation. According to the 7th National Census, there were more than 370 million migrants in 2020 [13], the majority of whom will leave their children behind due to the Hukou system which institutionally excluded their children from accessing state-sponsored social welfare programs such as public primary education [14]. Consequently, this large-scale migration created a large population of left-behind children (LBC). ...
From a bidirectional perspective, the present cross-sectional study explored the impacts of parent-child separation on the digital literacy of children and adolescents. Drawing upon data from 1894 students (12–18 years, 49.33 % females) in Nanling county, China, we found that parent-child separation can negatively affect the digital literacy of children and adolescents, but effects differ between children experiencing parental migration or parental divorce. Parental mediation can act as a mediator in this process while children's digital feedback to parents may be considered as an auxiliary promoter. To further promote the digital literacy of children and adolescents experiencing parent-child separation, assigned tasks from adults in which children can practice knowledge and skills related to digital devices and the Internet are recommended.
... In the 1950s, in order to prevent the rural population from spontaneously moving to cities, and to keep the grain price as low as possible to support rapid industralization in cities, particularly in heavy industries, the Chinese government established a special household registered system (the hukou system). Under this system, people born in rural areas could not move to the city and obtain urban hukou status unless mandated by the state (for literature on the hukou system, see Christiansen 1990;Cheng and Selden 1994;Mallee 1995;Chan and Li 1998). Although Chinese society has in many respects fundamentally changed since the end of the 1970s, the rural-urban dualism in social management largely remains the same. ...
... During the stage of the government's implementation of the organized withdrawal policy, farmers who settled in cities voluntarily gave up their contracted land in order to obtain urban household registration and institutionalized social security [77]. On the one hand, farmers obtaining urban household registration can bring many benefits, such as personal career development, children's education, and public services [78]. On the other hand, with the further expansion of non-agricultural employment in China, the main income source for farmers is non-agricultural employment, and they spend less time and effort on agriculture [79]. ...
The phenomenon of “separation of people and land” between urbanized farmers and rural land hinders the optimal allocation of land resources and is not conducive to the development of agricultural modernization and the implementation of rural revitalization strategies. Although the “separation of three rights” in agricultural land partially solves this problem, it also causes social inequity in the phenomenon of urbanized wealthy farmers collecting rent from poor farmers who depend on the land for a living. The Chinese government carried out a pilot reform aimed at the withdrawal of urbanized farmers from contracted land, and proposed a paid withdrawal policy, but the reform results were unsatisfactory. Based on evolutionary game theory and prospect theory, this paper constructed a two-party evolutionary game model between the government and farmers and simulated the behavioral strategies of the government and farmers in the contracted land withdrawal problem. The results show that first, the initial probability of government policy choice will affect the decision-making behavior of the government and farmers. Second, when the government’s economic compensation for farmers is higher than the farmers’ ideal expectation for land withdrawal compensation, the implementation of individualized withdrawal policy has a positive effect on farmers’ willingness to withdraw from contracted land. Third, farmers’ emotional needs for land, farmers’ ideal economic compensation, and farmers’ risk aversion all impede farmers’ withdrawal from contracted land. The government’s implementation of individualized withdrawal policy can improve farmers’ willingness to withdraw from contracted land by reducing farmers’ concerns about unstable land rights, improving the government’s security compensation, and reducing farmers’ sensitivity to profit and loss.
... Two hundred and forty-four million people migrated from rural-to-urban areas in the year 2017 (Department of Service and Management of Migrant Population National Health and Family Planning Commission of China 2018). These migrants often leave their children behind due to the Household Registration (Hukou) system established in China in the 1950s, which institutionally excludes rural migrants and their children from accessing state-sponsored social welfare programs such as quality public education (Mallee 1995). The institutional discrimination forces migrant parents to leave one parent behind or resort to extended family members (e.g., grandparents) to manage childcare duties. ...
This study aims to investigate the social mechanism underlying the associations between parental migration and left-behind children’s delinquent and deviant behaviours in rural China. Using a middle school student sample, our results reveal that the effects of parental migration on children’s delinquency differ across caretaking arrangements. Specifically, compared with children living with non-migrant parents, those cared for by a remaining father (with a mother migrated) or by one grandparent (with both parents migrated) had weaker bonding with primary caretakers and schools, which led to delinquency and deviance directly or indirectly through more frequent association with deviant peers. In contrast, children living with a remaining mother or with two grandparents did not differ significantly from those living with non-migrant parents.
... In the 1950s, in order to prevent the rural population from moving to cities spontaneously and to keep the grain price as low as possible to support a high speed of industralisation (particularly in heavy industries) in cities, the Chinese government established a special household registered system (known as "hukou" system in Chinese). Under this system, people born in the rural area cannot move to the city and obtain urban hukou status unless mandated by the State (for literature on hukou system, see Christiansen, 1990;Cheng and Selden, 1994;Mallee, 1995;Chan and Zhang, 1998). The rural and urban societies are also structured in completely different ways. ...
This report reviews basic health problems facing rural-urban migrants in China, and explores the question of why migrants are not included in the new medical care system that supposedly aims to cover as many people as possible. I suggest that the reasons lie in various structural and institutional factors far more fundamental than medical care itself. They include the rural-urban divide in welfare provision; the potential conflicts between the government’s immediate goal in medical care reform (to relieve State-owned enterprises from welfare burdens) and the costs of including migrants in the system; the tension between the informal employment relationship prevalent among migrants and the current medical care schemes’ reliance on formal employment relationship in implementation; and finally the friction between migrants’ mobility and the scheme’s localised operation pattern. Alternatively, I suggest that grassroots activities can become an important means of providing basic health services for migrants. Activities proven to be effective in practice include providing health education, extending urban community health services to migrants, allowing for or even encouraging the setting up of clinics by migrants themselves, and empowering migrants by providing legal assistance and developing migrants’ self-help organisations. Though these activities cannot change formal policies immediately, they may have far-reaching institutional implications in the long run.
... They believe that the Hukou system is one of the main social control tools used by the central government. The function of the Hukou system extends far beyond simply controlling population mobility [3][4][5][6][7]. ...
According to previous studies, the Chinese revised Hukou system has not been proven to be effective in the short-term movement of the rural labor force or in controlling urban populations. In this study, we address and analyze the self-selection problem from the perspective of inflows of short-term migration from the rural labor force and the endogeneity problem in the adoption of the revised Hukou system, based on the data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The study shows that the revised Hukou system adopted by Chinese local governments was significantly efficient and harmed the short-term migration decisions of the rural labor force.
... We maintain that the removal of the hukou system, which has been advocated for decades by China scholars, observers, and social activists, will only be the first step towards solving this problem. In fact, the hukou system has been reformed many times and substantial changes have already been made (see Chan and Buckingham, 2008;Chan and Zhang, 1999;Mallee, 1995;Tao, 2008). However, local governments in major cities are still reluctant to accept migrant children unconditionally. ...
The rural-to-urban migrant children’s education predicament in China’s major cities is well known. While the hukou system has been widely criticized for depriving many migrant children of quality education in recent years, we suggest that this is only the tip of the iceberg. The principal obstacle faced by the migrant children is China’s rural-urban dual system, which is the foundation of contemporary Chinese development. This article intends to shed light on the plight of these migrant children by elaborating on the relationship between the Chinese rural-urban dual system and the practice of development in China. The article concludes that these migrant children, stranded between the two systems, are the de facto victims of Chinese development, which has been based on a long-maintained “one country, two societies” strategy since the 1950s
... Most important to this review, a key concern of developing country governments is food and nutrition security for their populations; if migration is perceived to lead to reduced food production, governments may try to hinder or constrain rural-urban migration. Under the guise of maintaining food security, some governments have used explicit barriers to movement, such as China's hukou system, which assigns government benefits associated with one's place of residence (e.g., Mallee 1995). Such restrictions may lead to the misallocation of economic resources either geographically ( Jalan & Ravallion 2002) or across sectors (Adamopolous et al. 2017) over time. ...
Despite the fact that migration out of agriculture has always been a part of the economic development process, policy makers have long feared that migration from rural areas reduces agricultural production. This article reviews the growing microeconomic literature with more credible statistical identification that evaluates the effects of migration on agricultural production and other outcomes among rural households. By and large, migration does not negatively affect agricultural production, as households shift on one of several margins to reduce the lost labor impact. Through migrant remittances, migration can lead to one of several different types of investment. When investment occurs, the type of investment depends upon relative local returns to investments in agriculture, nonagriculture, or human capital. Some innovative recent work also documents the role of migration in catalyzing technical change. Future policy related to rural out-migration should focus on enhancing its positive effects and mitigating any negative ones.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Resource Economics Volume 11 is October 4, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
... People were firstly divided artificially into two main social groups-the agricultural or the non-agricultural due to their geographical location (Chan et al. [32] 1999; Yang et al. [33] 1999). Although the living standard of rank-and-file workers could not be compared to that of state cadres, they were much better off than the peasants who were constrained to the countryside (Chan [34] 2010; Mallee [35] 1995). Under the "hukou" system, the rural population-the majority-were not allowed to the rights and benefits conferred on urban residents. ...
... When the hukou system was first restored in 1951, it was primarily used for recording the residences of the urban population and tracking down any remaining antigovernment segments. The system was extended to also cover the rural population in 1955 (Mallee 1988(Mallee , 1995Cheng and Selden 1994). In 1958, the proclamation of a far more extensive hukou regulation (Hukou dengji tiaoli) marked the final step along this path. ...
Chan, Kam Wing (2019), “China’s Hukou System at 60: Continuity and Reform,” in Ray Yep, Jun Wang, Thomas Johnson (eds.) Edward Elgar Handbook on Urban Development in China, Edward Elgar, pp.59-79.
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=FQyEDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA59&dq=%22Kam+Wing+Chan%22&ots=-66KAu2bQQ&sig=jN7Co9xhZzrS5A0Fqf3KvKA9440#v=onepage&q=%22Kam%20Wing%20Chan%22&f=false
... Though many scholars argue that hukou system has undergone an incremental dismantling over the last three decades (Mallee, 1995;Wong & Wai-Po, 1998), especially in small cities and towns (Wang, 2002), in metropolitan cities like Beijing and Shanghai, the hukou system is still strictly carried out, and will continue to be. ...
Drawing primarily from Pierre Bourdieu’s work on “field” and “capital,”
this article examines in detail how institutional barriers have systematically
denied access to quality education to lower-class/caste students, which results
in educational inequality impeding the efforts of sustainable development.
China’s hukou (household registration system) and India’s varna vyavastha
(caste system) are used as examples to illustrate how oblivious institutional
barriers could manifest and exhibit in similar ways in two distinct sociopolitical
nations. The article concludes with making a case for deconstructing the discourses
on education for sustainable development based on the principles of
social justice and equity
... Between 1980 and1985, an One of the social costs of this massive migration is the increasing amount of children left behind in rural migrant-sending communities. The house- hold registration (hukou) system, a long-standing bifurcated social institu- tion implemented in the 1950s, defines each family as either an agricultural household or urban resident household, with the latter entitled to state- sponsored social welfare programs such as social insurance, medical care, and primary education (Mallee 1995). Although the system has been subject to much reform in recent years, rural migrants and their children are still institutionally excluded from the urban hukou system and have great diffi- culty in fully incorporating themselves into host cities of their own country ( Wu 2010). ...
Objectives
Examine the relationship between parental rural-to-urban migration, caretaking arrangement, and left-behind children’s self-reported victimization in rural China. The direct effect of parental migration on children’s victimization as well as the indirect effect through positive caretaking and children’s delinquent/problem behavior involvement is explored.
Methods
The study uses data from the Parental Migration and Children’s Well-being Survey, which collected information on parental migration and children’s experience of victimization from a probability sample of 800 middle school students in southern China. Structural equation modeling is used to evaluate hypothesized models by simultaneously assessing direct and indirect effects.
Results
Compared with children living with both parents in rural China, children left behind by their fathers have an elevated level of victimization. In addition, the chronic absence of fathers leads to a higher level of delinquent and problem behavior among left-behind children, which in turn leads to further victimization.
Conclusion
Left-behind children living with mothers, grandparents, or other relatives are an “at-risk” population for victimization. Local programs such as parenting lessons for left-behind parents and grandparents are needed. In addition, the importance of father’s chronic absence on left-behind children’s healthy physical and mental development needs to be further examined.
... Although multiple social factors are identified as possible reasons for the growth of this population, the Household Registration (hukou) system, a long-standing bifurcated social institution implemented since the 1950s in China, is widely considered by researchers and policymakers as the most vital one. The hukou system defines each family as either an agricultural household or urban resident household, with the latter entitled to state-sponsored social welfare programs such as social insurance, subsidized healthcare, and quality education (Mallee 1995). Whereas the hukou system serves different functions over time, it is originally created to control rural-to-urban migration and has evolved into Bthe institutional guardian of the deep urban-rural divide that has characterized China since the mid-1950s^ (Cheng and Selden 1994: 667). ...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations between parental rural-to-urban migration, caretaking arrangement, and left-behind children’s self-reported delinquency in rural China. The direct effect of parental migration on children’s delinquency as well as the indirect effect through children–caretaker conflict, school bonding, and children’s association with deviant peers are explored. The study uses data from the Parental Migration and Children’s Well-Being Survey, which collected information on parental migration and delinquency from a probability sample of 600 middle school students in southern China. Path models are used to evaluate hypotheses generated from mainstream criminology theories and the literature of immigration and internal migration in rural China. Parental migration and caretaking arrangement has a significant effect on children’s socialization and behavioral outcomes in rural China. Results indicate that pathways to delinquency among left-behind children differ across various caretaking arrangements. Grandparents and other extended family members, when serving as primary caretakers, are challenged to effectively monitor and supervise left-behind children’s interaction with deviant peers, which is the main route to further delinquency. Stay-at-home mothers, on the other hand, have difficulty in developing strong mother–child bonds and in avoiding conflictual and strained relationships with their children. The study highlights the importance of a father’s presence on children’s behavioral outcomes in the context of rural China.
... One particular advantage of the housing transition is that it enables those fishers to acquire an urban household registration. Household registration, according to residential location, is very important in Chinese society (Wang and Murie 2000;Mallee 200�). Having a household registration in an urban area allows access to the city social security system and to schools in the district of the household registration. ...
This chapter explores the household livelihoods of fishers who have recently moved from living on their fishing boats for generations to on-land, government-built flats in southern China. This significant household and employment transition has resulted in marked patterns of intergenerational change requiring young people, adults and older people to adjust to their everyday lives in fixed housing rather than mobile boats. The chapter considers both the gendered and generational impacts of the social and economic transformations involved in the move from living and working on boats to land, drawing on qualitative data from fieldwork in the Shaoguan region of Guandong, China.
... The Wuhan Donghu Hi-tech Cluster serves a good research site for reasons other than that it is a typical example of technological catch-up in transitioning China. Firstly, due to restriction of China's household registration system (Hein, 1995), labour flow was difficult between regions but relatively easy within industrial clusters. By focusing on the data of one cluster, we are able to reveal activities of domestic technology transfer that took place in a specific cluster between SOEs and POEs. ...
Ownership heterogeneity matters in firms' technological catch-up process. By combining visibility and capability logics, we propose that at the earlier stage of catch-up, SOEs are more likely to perform technology importation than technology assimilation, while POEs are more likely to perform technology assimilation than technology importation. Also, at the later stage of catch-up, SOEs are more likely to perform technology innovation than technology assimilation, while POEs are more likely to integrate various technology activities. Based upon a sample of SOEs and POEs in a technology cluster in China, our results support these arguments.
... Under the HuKou system, households are divided to Agriculture HuKou and non- Agriculture HuKou, where the rural-urban migration was strictly restricted. In the 1990s, 83% of households were classified under the Agriculture HuKou category, according to Mallee (1995). In 1988, the HuKou reform took place, whereby rural migrants were allowed to obtain a temporary residence. ...
Labor migration, which frequently results in family separations, is widely known as one of
the main ways of alleviating poverty in developing countries. In China, migrant workers
helped build the Chinese dream in cities across the country. But for their children, who
are left behind in the countryside, the potential health problems of their physical and
social development has becoming a national issue. This study uses the China Health and
Nutrition Survey (CHNS) to identify the impact of parents’ migration on children’s health
outcomes in rural China. The measurements of children’s health outcomes are weight-forage
Z-score (WAZ), height-for-age Z-score (HAZ), nutrient intake (consumption of calories
and protein), children illness, and the number of immunization shots that children get
in the survey year. To identify the effect of changes in parental migration on changes in
child health, we instrument changes in migration status with county level historical average
migration rates. We find there are few significant effects of parents’ migration on children’s
outcomes and provide potential explanations for this phenomena.
... Since the Hukou system (household registration system) underwent relaxation in the 1990s, the number of rural migrants in China has been soaring (Cai and Wang 2006;Mallee 1995). During the last decade, this number doubled, increas- ing from 78 million in 2001 to 153 million in 2010, accounting for 12% of the Chinese population [China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), from Cai and Wang (2006)]. ...
About 60 million children under the age of 18 are left behind by their parents in rural China. This paper studies the effect of migrant parents on the educational attainment of their left-behind children in rural China. A theoretical model of optimal schooling in the context of parental migration is proposed. Then, reduced-form equations are estimated using probit model, instrumental variables probit model, and linear instrumental variables model. Results show that parental migration has a negative effect on children's school enrollment. This negative effect is significant and sizable on the school enrollment of boys, but insignificant on the school enrollment of girls. The most important source of this robust negative effect on boys is the absence of fathers. Results suggest that left-behind mothers or relatives cannot fulfill fathers' role successfully in disciplining boys and help with their educational needs.
... The expansion of migration in China was facilitated by the relaxation of constraints on the household registration (hukou) system. 6 The initial hukou reform took place in 1988 and established a mechanism for rural migrants to obtain legal temporary residence in China's urban areas (Mallee 1995). After rural migrants could obtain legal temporary residence, they became better able to establish networks to facilitate the job search in distant labor markets (e.g., Munshi 2003). ...
The unprecedented large-scale rural-to-urban migration in China has left many rural children living apart from their parents. In this study, we examine the impact of parental migration on the nutritional status of young children in rural areas. We use the interaction terms between wage growth, by gender, in provincial capital cities and initial village migrant networks as instrumental variables to account for migration selection. Our results show that parental migration has no significant effect on the height of children, but it improves their weight. We provide suggestive evidence that the improvement in weight may be achieved through increased access to tap water in migrant households.
... Although there have been some changes in the hukou system since the 1980s, migrants are still discriminated on various fronts. For more analyses on the hukou system, see Christiansen (1990); Cheng and Selden (1994); Mallee (1995); and Chan and Zhang (1998). 16 Chinese citizens register their hukou with the police stations of townships in the rural areas; in the cities, they register with the police stations in designated streets (jiedao). ...
The government and the public considered rural-urban migrant workers as the most problematic group during the SARS outbreak in China in early 2003. They feared that migrant workers were susceptible to the disease, tended to flee major cities where the early outbreaks occurred, and then spread the virus to the countryside where containing the disease would be difficult. This paper suggests that the links between the SARS outbreak and the migrants are far more complex and they must be understood in an institutional context. First, the paper argues that the migrants pose special challenges to the government in managing the outbreak not only because of their mobility, their low incomes or lack of health awareness, but also because they are outside the state's control and support system. Second, this paper suggests that the migrants fled the SARS-hit cities due to what I hypothesize as “chain reaction.” The migrants' institutionally marginalized position rendered them vulnerable to the social and economic disruptions resulting from mass mobilization, which may have more social implications than their susceptibility to the virus. These two arguments reveal the problems stemming from the absence of appropriate institutional mechanisms, such as a universal medical care system, with respect to migrants. In view of increasing uncertainties in present times, it is imperative for the government to provide basic social security to migrant workers and to maintain economic stability.
... As a result, the types of individuals undertaking internal versus international migration may differ significantly, and therefore international and internal migration should be differentiated clearly within a survey and analyzed separately. 2 It is also worth mentioning that our focus is on migration and its impacts on source households and communities. Although many of the expected impacts of migration may flow 1 The best studied example of internal migration restrictions is China's hukou system, which was relaxed throughout the 1990s and early 2000s (Mallee, 1995). 2 Furthermore, internal migration was largely covered by Lucas (2000). ...
... If the infant is born at the parents' temporary place of residence, the father or mother may apply for birth registration after he or she returns to the household's permanent residence registration. In case father and mother vary in their places of permanent residence, the child inherits the residence status of their mothers (Mallee 1995). And on application for birth registration, the newborn infant's "medical birth certificate" or a certificate produced by the residence/village committee testifying to the circumstances of the infant's birth, plus the certificate of permission to give birth, and the residence registration booklet should be presented. ...
Rural-to-urban migration is a transformative force in economic development and the unprecedented scale of China's experience offers valuable insight for other countries. We draw comparisons with international findings as we review empirical evidence on the impacts of migration on rural migrant-sending communities. We begin by examining how institutional factors, particularly household registration systems and land tenure policies, shape migration decisions. Next, the discussion turns to methodological challenges in studying migration, presents long-term trends, and reviews the impacts of migration on rural household earnings, consumption, and the risk of falling into poverty. We then explore the global phenomenon of “left behind” populations, comparing China's experience with other countries regarding the impact of migration on children's well-being, women's empowerment, and care for older people. Throughout, we highlight the way China's internal migration patterns both align with and diverge from international experiences. We conclude by identifying key research gaps.
In the past, China divided its citizens into “agricultural hukou” and “non‐agricultural hukou” to limit rural–urban migration, which contributed to China's early industrialization. However, the binary household registration system no longer suits China's development, and cities in China have successively carried out hukou reforms. Based on the reforms that trigger rural–urban migration, we investigate the impact of low‐cost and low‐skilled migrant workers on firm‐level total factor productivity (TFP). We employ a staggered difference‐in‐differences (DID) strategy to show the following results: (1) The hukou reform substantially reduces the listed firms' TFP by 6.9%. (2) The hukou reform has increased the number of employees and the labor intensity, as well as reduced average employee salaries, employee responsibility, and R&D in enterprises, revealing the mechanism by which hukou reform affects firm productivity. (3) Our findings are particularly pronounced in non‐state‐owned enterprises (non‐SOEs), enterprises with more stringent financing constraints, and cities with wider rural–urban income gaps.
This chapter focuses on the discussion of how the hukou system influences transnational Chinese students’ migration to the three megacities and their interpretation and practices of cityzenship. Focusing on how returnees attained hukou in megacities and why they valued it, this chapter shows that the hukou system institutionalises overseas degrees as cultural capital and converts them to localised social rights. This chapter also stresses the importance of a cultural analysis of hukou. Noting that child-centred culture [Yan, American Anthropologist, 118(2), 244–257 (2016)] and educational desire [Kipnis, Governing educational desire: Culture, politics, and schooling in China. University of Chicago Press (2011)] lead to geographical variation in the value of hukou, with first-tier cities at the top and rural areas at the bottom, this chapter explains why it is necessary to set the family as the basic social unit in the analysis of hukou. Therefore, while conventional scholarship considers how the hukou system regulates internal-urban migration by limiting individual migrants’ access to localised social rights [Cheng & Selden, The China Quarterly, 139, 644–668 (1994); Fan, China on the move: Migration, the state, and the household. Routledge (2007); Solinger, Contesting citizenship in urban China: Peasant migrants, the state, and the logic of the market. University of California Press (1999); Wang, Asian Perspective, 29, 85–124 (2005); Zhang & Wang, Citizenship Studies, 14(2), 145–166 (2010)], this chapter argues the hukou system shapes and directs migration by controlling family-based social rights.Keywords
Hukou
Child-centred family cultureUrban migration in China
Background
With the development of urbanization in China and the liberalization of the hukou conversion policy, more and more people have converted from agricultural hukou to non-agricultural hukou. Based on this, the present study intends to examine whether there is an association between earlier hukou conversion and current depression level in the group of older adults, and the underlying mechanisms of this association.
Method
The present study used data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) to explore the relationship between earlier hukou conversion and current depression level in older adults, using 10,213 older adults who had a hukou conversion as the study population. This study used ordinary least squares (OLS) and ordered logit models for regression analysis to explore the association between earlier hukou conversion and current depression level. Meanwhile, we further analyzed whether social status and social relationships play a mediating role between earlier hukou conversion and depression level of the older adults.
Results
The study led to the following conclusions: (1) Older adults who had a hukou conversion had lower levels of depression compared to those who had an agricultural hukou. (2) Compared to older adults who had an agricultural hukou, they had lower level of depression for both active and passive hukou conversions. (3) Older adults who had received lower education and lived in the eastern region exhibited lower level of depression in both actively and passively changing hukou. (4) Changes in social status and social relationship are the mediating mechanisms between hukou conversion and depression level of older adults.
Conclusion
This study found that there was some association between earlier hukou conversion and current depression level of the group of older adults. There is a significant reduction in depression level of the older adults after they have achieved hukou conversion to obtain a non-agricultural hukou. The government can learn from the formation mechanism of lower depression level of the older adults who had achieved hukou conversion to promote the reform and the development of the hukou system.
Schools are becoming increasingly diverse due to globalization and migration. Worldwide, more than 700 million people migrate across international borders, and more than 200 million migrate within one country. Within China, approximately 36 million school-aged children relocate to cities with parents in the search for better education and future life. However, less research focuses on the school life experiences of migrant students, especially in terms of school bullying victimization. Using the Program for International Student Assessment 2018, this study examines the relationship between the migration status of students and their experiences of school bullying in China. This study finds that students who are migrants are more likely to experience school bullying compared with their local peers. Given that the experience of school bullying can exert long-term effects on the growth and later life of students, the finding calls for actions to provide a more inclusive school environment for migrant students. Lastly, this study provides important implications for educators and researchers.
This ethnography of contemporary trade-skilled labour migrants from China to Australia proposes migration literacy and national class frames in motion as new lenses to theorise social class and international mobility under selective migration policy. National dimensions of class are critical to transnational analyses as they move and are reformed and reinterpreted in new contexts. Case studies of Chinese migrants offer particular insights as new Chinese social class and suzhi discourses are imbricated with spatial mobilities. Dimensions of class are evident in citizenship choices, migrant temporalities and return migration imaginaries.
China’s unprecedented rate of development over the past 40 years has created a rapidly unequal society. This divide is starkest when comparing rural and urban spaces. The Chinese government’s development strategy has largely centered on spending substantial resources on urbanization. Therefore, the quantity and quality of providing public goods and services has been skewed toward urban areas, even though the rural counterpart still hosts two-thirds of China’s population. Strict hukou (household registration) enforcement has kept rural residents legally away from public goods, services, and social welfares in attractive urban center. However, even as urban dwellers are often more affluent, they also demand more from the government. This chapter seeks to explore the difference between rural and urban hukou holders on their perceptions of public goods provision. By utilizing the 2015 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), we applied binomial logistic regression to test whether hukou status predicts people’s satisfaction toward public goods and services provision (N = 10,195). Rural hukou holders have 20% lower odds of being satisfied with general public goods and services provision than urban hukou holders when controlling for demographic and socioeconomic indicators (p < 0.05). When the other control variables are set to their means, the probability of urban hukou holders being satisfied is roughly 50%, while rural counterpart is 45%. In the analysis of nine specific types of public goods and services, rural dwellers were more satisfied in terms of healthcare, housing, and social control, but less satisfied with public infrastructures. Hukou yielded no statistical significance in public education, public employment services, social security, temporary subsidies, and public culture and physics. These results show that public goods provision is a complex relationship in China, which does not distribute neatly across the rural-urban divide.
It examines how land commodification has changed the dynamics of hukou policy innovations in China. The increasing demand of local governments for land to fuel industrialization and urbanization creates appreciating land values, which in turn lead villagers to update their belief about the value associated with their rural hukou. This is perhaps especially the case in economically more developed areas where rural benefits, many of which involve land, induce villagers to value their rural hukou and to be more resistant against land expropriation. This leads local governments, many of which are fiscally dependent on land, to provide more generous land-taking compensation, including an urban hukou. Drawing on an original survey experiment, we find that villagers are less willing to give up their land and change their hukou status from rural to urban when they are not provided with pension benefits and when their collective yearly dividends are discontinued.
The 1990s are often described as a time of political retreat by artists and intellectuals in China, immediately following the protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and their bloody crackdown. The 1990s were also, however, a time of dramatic spatial and social flux in the country, characterized by radical urbanization, widespread demolition of the built environment and mass rural to urban migration.
This paper considers the political activities of Chinese artists during the 1990s and early 2000s, yet does so with a focus on their spatial engagements, arguing that these constituted a new, necessary and highly productive mode of political work at this time. Describing a number of relatively self-made artists’ colonies that appeared in Beijing in the early 1990s, and tracing these through to their semi-institutionalization (as ‘creative industries precincts’) by the Chinese Communist Party in the mid-2000s, it demonstrates alternative means by which China's artists continued to intervene in the negotiation of a Chinese modernity, once the possibilities for discursive engagement had been largely foreclosed.
Drawing on archival research, personal interviews and literature in art history as well as cultural, urban and policy studies, this analysis thus tells a spatial history of this period often historicized as the development of ‘Contemporary Chinese Art’. Importantly, this paper also seeks to offer new political imaginaries, pressing against expectations that Chinese artists be revolutionary or openly oppositional, and illustrating modes of political intervention that instead work creatively and discreetly with the movements of institutional and physical change.
This paper investigates how lineages, the commonly found organizations in rural villages of China, affect people's intra- and cross-lineage cooperative behavior. We use data from the Chinese Household Income Project Survey 2002, which exclusively contains information about the lineage structure in these villages allowing us to classify three levels of lineage-based heterogeneity. Our identification strategy relies on the exogeneity of lineage-based heterogeneity. We find evidence that people in a village with higher lineage-based heterogeneity are less likely to exhibit reciprocity behavior within lineages or contribute to the provision of public goods that are jointly shared across lineages. The estimation results remain robust to the inclusion of various control variables and additional background characteristics. Finally, we examine a number of other economic outcomes and find that more homogenous villages do better than other types of villages.
Reluctant Heroes provides a rich portrait of the urban milieu and life in two contrasting yet interrelated cities in South China. It is a fascinating study of rickshaw pullers in Hong Kong and Canton. © 2008 by Hong Kong University Press, HKU. All rights reserved.
This book examines the role of institutions in China's recent large-scale economic, social and political transformation. The book argues that, although the importance of institutions in China's rapid economic growth and social development over the past 30 years is widely acknowledged, exactly how institutions affect changes in particular national and historical settings is less well understood. Unlike existing literature, it offers perspectives from a variety of disciplines - including law, economics, politics, international relations and communication studies - to consider whether institutions form, evolve and change differently according to their historical or cultural environments and if their utilitarian functions can, and should be, observed, identified and measured in different ways. The book discusses China's political and legal institutions; the international institutions with which China engages; institutions promoting science and technology; media companies; and local institutions including the household registration system. It also examines how institutions themselves have been formed, changed and re-formed over recent decades, and suggests theoretical and methodological adjustments in institutional analysis to allow a fuller understanding of the institutional dynamics of China's transformation. © 2011 Xiaoming Huang for selection and editorial matter. All rights reserved.
Since the foundation of the People's Republic of China, a series of centralized public policies had played important roles in shaping the social landscaping of China society, and well-being of its citizens. The hukou system is one of the most important contributing factors to social exclusion in transitional China. Attempts to reform and abolish this system have led to a variety of policies implemented at the local level. Through examining the hukou policies in different hierarchical cities, this paper illustrates the ongoing trends of decentralization and commodification that are already evident in public policy reform. Local governments are gaining more autonomy as the reforms of public policy are intensified and local economies become more developed, and differentiation between locals and non-locals are more likely to become widened. Nevertheless, commodification in the reform of the hukou system opens the way for those who have greater wealth or are better educated. Local governments are increasingly using market forces to guide public policy, which is resulting in a growing marginalized or excluded class of rural-urban migrants and economically deprived urban dwellers. The paper argues that it is essential to rethink the roles of the government as both policy maker and economic actor, and the balance and paradoxes between the two. The importance of the government as a redistributor in public policy should be readdressed in contemporary China.
China is transitioning from a traditional agrarian society into a modern industrial urban society. The main objective of this study is to establish a simple index to characterize the integrated transformation in a fixed area during China's process of urbanization and industrialization. This research focuses on key aspects of the urban-rural integration that is occurring-land usage, production efficiencies, employment, and household registration structures-to establish a "Relative Rurality Index" (RRI). It assesses these measures in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area of Chongqing (TGRAC). This index is not used to identify absolute urban or rural zones spatially, but to represent the gradients between the min a fixed area. RRI evaluations conducted in 2000 and 2010 indicate that a decade of development has led to an across-the-board decline in rurality in all TGRAC counties. Imbalances in area developments have also increased, with a clear rurality spatial differential, and basic correspondence between the spatial distribution of rurality and the urbanization of strategic deployments. Policy and non-Linear regression analyses show that changes in the rurality of the TGRAC are consistent with the derivative of the central government's strategic programs and policies. In short, the urban-rural system in the TGRAC has undergone deep and lasting change. The results of this study show that the rurality characterized by RRI is both more accurate and comprehensive than the urbanization level presented in government statistics. Based on an in-depth analysis of the urban-rural systems, this study provides an effective framework for policy-making that will support healthy urbanization and industrialization in China.
This paper focuses on issues of urbanization from the perspective of the social sciences. It elaborates on the importance of the social sciences in urban studies and argues approaches to achieving comprehensive development. The focus of the study is on developing countries, particularly China, that are experiencing rapid urbanization, growth, and development. In this study, the case of China is examined with the aim of demonstrating unforeseen challenges of urbanization in such contexts. This study then explores comprehensive solutions of global concern. By examining China’s new urbanization plan, the study discusses possible routes towards comprehensive development. Furthermore, this study will argue the importance of urbanism in urbanization and development and how it can be supported by the application of the social sciences. The knowledge transfer from the social sciences to the built environment is discussed as an approach to tackle issues of urbanization in the developing world. Finally, this paper argues methods of enhancing the quality and values of urbanism as part of the process of urbanization.
This article argues that perspectives of migration as a matter of individual choice or structural coercion are limited in explaining Asian experiences in internal and international migration. Migration experiences in Asia range from early coerced and state-mediated migrations to migrations that are mostly demand-determined. A few exceptional cases, such as that of Malaysia, Indonesia's transmigration programs, and enforced migration on account of infrastructural projects, are noted. Also highlighted is migration in China before and after 1978. The Chinese path is distinct in that before market reforms, there was little rural to urban migration despite a high rate of industrialization. After 1978, rural to urban migration and urbanization increased, but was still lower compared to the rest of Asia. Whether China will go the same way as other Asian countries and how the state will respond to the challenges of increasing migration remain to be seen.
Based on a review of government policy documents and research literature, this paper provides an account of the evolution of government policies in China since 2000. The state of China has selectively provided some inclusive policies for rural-urban migrants but denied them formal membership and offered them only partial social entitlements in the host city. The implementation of a some social policies for rural migrants has largely been ineffective. Further efforts need to be made to enhance the inclusion of rural migrants in China's urban areas.
This paper proposes a parametric approach to estimating a dynamic binary response panel data model that allows for endogenous contemporaneous regressors. Such a model is of particular value for settings in which one wants to estimate the effects of an endogenous treatment on a binary outcome. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the approach, we use it to examine the impact of rural-urban migration on the likelihood that households in rural China fall below the poverty line. In this application, it is shown that migration is important for reducing the likelihood that poor households remain in poverty and that non-poor households fall into poverty. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that failure to control for unobserved heterogeneity would lead the researcher to underestimate the impact of migrant labor markets on reducing the probability of falling into poverty.
Because China's massive population greatly affects the world total its ability to limit population growth is important. The 1954 and 1968 birth control campaigns were not very successful, but population planning has been revived since 1978. Discussion of the need for birth control and the means of implementing the policy are followed by case studies from Szechwan, the Tianshan Workers' Residential Area in Shanghai, and the Tunnel Hill Production Brigade in Kwangsi. Problems created by the policy are discussed. - D.G.Price
A review of demographic processes responsible for and associated with urban growth in developing countries suggests several conclusions that run counter to some common views of these processes. The rate of change in the proportion urban in developing countries is not exceptionally rapid by historical standards. Urban growth through most of the developing world results primarily not from rural-urban migration but from the natural increase of urban populations. Among the factors that influence the growth rate of individual cities, national rates of population growth are dominant. Urban growth in developing countries has typically not been associated with a deterioration in industry/urban ratios. Evidence for these conclusions is presented from a United Nations study of urban and rural population change, and policy implications are suggested.
This chapter discusses economizing on urbanization in socialist countries. The socialist strategy of rapid industrialization, which has now been pursued for at least a generation, has succeeded in increasing the proportion of GNP from manufacturing and related industries to levels that are above the “normal” for market economies at similar stages of development. However, this high level of activity in manufacturing is not fully revealed by the demographic characteristics and by the distribution of the labor force by sector of origin of these East European countries during the 1960s. As urbanization is a dynamic historical process, the economizing on urbanization hypothesis should be tested directly within the historical context of growth and structural changes. Such a test is essential in order to find out whether the deviant structures found in the socialist countries were actually created during the socialist period, and can thus, be explained by the socialist growth strategy, or whether the deviant structures were inherited from the preceding regimes—and must then be explained by completely different factors.
The institutional framework of agriculture defines the context in which the relationship between the peasant and the state is enacted. In China from the mid-1950s until 1979 that framework was characterized by a collectivist and interventionist ethos. The state–peasant relationship weighed heavily in favour of the state. The three tiers of agricultural organization–commune, brigade and production team – facilitated control of the economic activities of individual peasants by the government, whether at central or local level. Individual initiative was largely limited to those activities which could be carried out in spare time or on private plots. The relationship between effort and reward was frequently tenuous and distribution was guided by egalitarian principles.
The functions of any commodity distribution system include balancing of supply and demand and allocating available supplies among individual consumers on the basis of some acceptable criterion. In an unregulated market system, both functions are handled by the free movement of price. Short supply relative to demand results in higher market prices which both reduce demand and stimulate increased supply. The criterion upon which available goods are allocated is purchasing power as determined by income level. As prices rise those with relatively low purchasing power will be deterred or will purchase inferior substitute commodities to fulfil their needs. In poor countries in which basic commodities require a high proportion of household income, fluctuations in the prices of these commodities of the magnitude required to balance availability with requirements often have serious consequences for the welfare of poorly endowed groups.
In mid May 1983 the Wuhan Public Security Bureau posted a notice along the walls of Hankow on “temporary residence certificates” for non-native personnel coming into the city to work. Since a check of the State Council Bulletin and the People's Daily for the months surrounding this time (from 1 January through 31 July 1983) turned up no similar central-level document, one must conclude that the source for this circular was local. Also, in the period since (through the time of final preparation of the present manuscript, late March 1984), those sources have still not published any authoritative rulings on this matter, insofar as I have been able to verify. Moreover, recent press accounts pertaining to city household registration describe decisions about this work as if they were taken by the municipalities themselves. Thus, the regulations translated and analysed below may only represent the situation and its handling in one particular region. Nonetheless, their intrinsic interest, their broader implications and their import reach far beyond this one case.
This article provides an explanation of the origins and implications of rural underemployment for China. Chinas surplus labor is 1st examined from a historical perspective. Next Chinese measures of rural underemployment are analyzed. Finally the implications of this problem are discussed. However measured there is no question that rising rural underemployment has wrought fundamental changes to Chinas economy in the post-Mao era. It has prompted a long overdue restructuring of rural employment caused Chinese authorities to rethink the benefits of urbanization and boosted the productivity of rural workers who remained in agriculture. On the other hand there have been problems in this transition including the loss of badly needed rural health and educational specialists and the departure from rural areas of some of its most productive and well-educated workers. Over time Chinese officials and scholars expect that the rural employment trends shown from 1978 to the present will continue. These trends include a continuing decline in agricultures rural employment share and a rapid increase in the number of workers in industry construction and non-agricultural sectors. This it is hoped will reduce the ranks of rural underemployment.
It could be that no people have ever outdone the Chinese in ascribing moral virtues to the state or in deprecating the worth of the individual. First Confucianism and then the Chinese version of Leninism went all out in extolling the importance of rulers and society and in minimizing the rights of individuals. The gap between the moral worth and the recognized rights of state and citizen in China was and remains huge both because of the way the Chinese have consistently given paramountcy to the state and the ways in which they have subordinated the individual to the group. The extraordinary imbalance in the relations of the state and individuals provides both the structural and the cultural bases for the human rights practices which are now the most contentious issues between China and the west, especially the United States. What is outrageous to Americans can be for most Chinese normal expectations – although since Tiananmen a majority may feel that the state has gone too far.
The "difficulty in recruiting labor" syndrome refers to the situation in which hiring units, under the current labor-wage system, are unable to fulfill either quantitatively or qualitatively the annual labor recruiting plan transmitted to them by the state, thus giving rise to a phenomenon in which recruitment of labor has not met the standards of adequacy. This phenomenon reflects that the laborers, as individuals, are themselves not following the state's hiring plan, but are selecting jobs that satisfy them according to their own personal will and thereby realizing their own employment objectives. This is what is meant by the "selectivity in employment" problem.
Urban-rural relations in China have a dual character: while a higher level of urban-rural economic balance than most other countries has been achieved, a sharp structural cleavage between workers and peasants has been maintained, based mainly on strict household registrations. Peasants are prevented from migrating to towns and gaining employment there, except under specially approved contracts arranged to resolve local shortages of industrial labour. Contract labour has complex and important effects on rural and urban industrial development. It also embodies the duality of urban-rural relations in China: at the same time as it redistributes wage funds from urban to rural areas, it reinforces the class cleavage between workers and peasants (including contract workers). It also opens up a complex web of inequalities and cleavages among those peasants with contract work and those without. Contract workers have been placed in a contradictory class position which has been a flashpoint of political conflict. The relationships of contract labour to urban industrial and rural development, urbanization, urban-rural balance and structural cleavage, class structure and political conflict are examined through a study of Shulu County, an ordinary rural area with agrowing industrial centre in which over half of the industrial labour force is comprised of peasant contract workers.
Through interviews with city residents, Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish provide a unique survey of urban life in the last decade of Mao Zedong's rule. They conclude that changes in society produced under communism were truly revolutionary and that, in the decade under scrutiny, the Chinese avoided ostensibly universal evils of urbanism with considerable success. At the same time, however, they find that this successful effort spawned new and equally serious urban problemsâbureaucratic rigidity, low production, and more.
This paper examines the recent decentralization of governance in Indonesia and its impact on local infrastructure provision. The decentralization of decisionmaking power to local jurisdictions in Indonesia may have improved the matching of public infrastructures provision with local preferences. However, decentralization has made local public infrastructures depend on local resources. Due to differences in initial endowments, this may result in the divergence of local public infrastructures in rich and poor jurisdictions. Using data from village-level panel surveys conducted in 1996, 2000, and 2006, this paper finds that (1) local public infrastructures depend on local resources, (2) decentralization has improved the availability of local public infrastructures, (3) local jurisdictions are converging to a similar level of local public infrastructure, and (4) to some extent, decentralized public infrastructures' provision reflects local preferences.
Zhongguo Renkou Qianyi [Population Migration in ChinaTemporary Residence Regulations in Wuhan
- Y Shen
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Shen, Y. and Tong, C. (1992) Zhongguo Renkou Qianyi [Population Migration in China]. Beijing: Statistical Publishing House. Solinger, D. J. (1985) 'Temporary Residence Regulations in Wuhan, May 1983', China Quarterly 101: 98-103.
New York: Sharpe. Popularion Almanac 1991: Editorial Board of Almanac of China's Population (Population Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Zhongguo Renkou Niunjian 1991 [Almanac of China's Population 19911
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Kwok, W. L. Parish, A. G. Yeh, Xu X. (eds) Chinese Urban Reform, What Model Now.P, pp. 78-106. New York: Sharpe. Popularion Almanac 1991: Editorial Board of Almanac of China's Population (Population Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Zhongguo Renkou Niunjian 1991 [Almanac of China's Population 19911. Beijing: Economic Management Publishing House. Popularion Statistical Yearbook 1991: Department of Population Statistics, State Statistical Bureau, Zhongguo Renkou Tongii Nianjian 1991 [Statistical Yearbook of China's Population]. Beijing: China Statistical Publishing House.
Migration and Urban Surplus Labour: The Policy Options
- R H Sabot
Sabot, R. H. (1988) 'Migration and Urban Surplus Labour: The Policy Options', in J. Gugler (ed.) The Urbanization of the Third World, pp. 93-108. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hukou Guanlixue [Household Registration Management]
- G Liu
Liu, G. (ed.) (1992) Hukou Guanlixue [Household Registration Management]. Beijing: Zhongguo Jiancha Chubanshe.
Social Division and Peasant Mobility in Mainland China: The Implications of the Hu-k'ou SystemCentral Committee's Circular on Rural Work in 1984
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Christiansen, F. (1991) 'Social Division and Peasant Mobility in Mainland China: The Implications of the Hu-k'ou System', Issues and Studies 26(4): 23-42. Document No. 1 (1984) 'Central Committee's Circular on Rural Work in 1984', FBIS-DR 13
Shanghai Renkou Qianyi Yanjiu [Investigation of population migration in Shanghai
- K Zhang
Zhang, K. (ed.) (1989) Shanghai Renkou Qianyi Yanjiu [Investigation of population migration in Shanghai]. Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Publishing House.
Basic Facts on the Household Registration System Armonk: SharpeThe Changing Rural-Urban Relationship in China's Economic Reform'. Unpublished manuscript. Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences: Institute of Population and Development Studies
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Directive on Dissuasion of Peasants From Blind Influx to Cities
- State Council
Wei Shanghai de jingji jianshe baojia huhang
- Jiefang Ribao
The Changing Rural-Urban Relationship in China's Economic Reform’. Unpublished manuscript. Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences: Institute of Population and Development Studies
- Zuox
Dangdai Zhongguo de Laodongli Guanli
- G He
Recent Development of Small Towns in China From Peasant to Entrepreneur: Growth and Change in Rural China
- J Middelhoek
Gendai Chūgoku no koseki seido’ [The household registration system of modern China]
- Uchida T.
Basic Commodity Distribution in the PRC
- Chinn
From Peasant to Entrepreneur: Growth and Change in Rural China
- J Middelhoek
Laodongbu guanyu zuohao zhaopin gongzuo de tongzhi’ [Notice of the Ministry of Labour On Doing the Recruitment Work Well]
- Ministry of Labour
Gong'anbu guanyu chengzhen zanzhu renkou guanli zanxing guiding’ [Ministry of Public Security Temporary Regulations Concerning the Management of the Temporary Resident Population of Cities]
- Ministry of Public Security
Guowuyuan guanyu fangzhi nongcun renkou mangmu wailiu de zhishi’ [Directive from the State Council Concerning Preventing the Rural Population from Blindly Moving to Other Places] reprinted inChina Population Almanac
- State Council
Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun zhiyuanbing tuichu xianyi anzhi zhanxing banfa’ [Temporary Methods for Reassignment of Work to Voluntary Soldiers in the PLA upon Leaving Active Service]
- State Council
Guoying jianzhu qiye zhaoyong nongmin hetongzhi gongren he shiyong nongcun jianzhudui zanxing banfa’ [Temporary Methods for State Construction Enterprises Employing Peasant Contract Workers and Using Rural Construction Teams]
- State Council
Guowuyuan guanyu jinyibu jiejue ganbu fuqi liangdi fenzhu wenti de tongzhi’ [Notice of the State Council On Further Solving the Problem of Cadre Couples Living Apart in Different Places]
- State Council
Farmers to receive urban residence cards
- Swb
Minzhengbu guanyu quanguo jundui tuixiu ganbu he tuiwu junren anzhi gongzuo huiyi de baogao' [Ministry of Civil Affairs' Report of the Conference on the Reassignment of Work for Retired Officers and Demobilized Soldiers]
- Ministry of Civil Affairs
Guanyu “nongzhuanfei” zhengce guanli gongzuo fengong yijian de baogao' [Report Concerning Opinions on the Division of Labour in the Work of Managing the ‘Peasant‐Turning‐Nonagricultural’ Policy]
- Ministries of Public Security and Commerce