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As a matter of fact, mainland China can be described as a "quasi-divided country." The location where one's household is registered is like one's nation; the household registry book is like an ID card and a temporary residence permit (which allows one to live outside the area of one's household registration) is a quasi domestic passport.
Unlike the past, Chinese citizens nowadays can travel anywhere in the country (although special entry permits are required to go to autonomous regions within the mainland, as well as Hong Kong and Macau). Also, Chinese citizens can live outside their hometowns, but they must have temporary residence permits to do so. Otherwise they will be seen as "illegal immigrants" and will be treated even worse than illegal immigrants in the United States. They can also work outside their hometowns, but jobs always go to local citizens first.
This is to say, Chinese people need a "green card" to work in their own country, and they can be considered temporary residents even though they are living within their own nation. Moreover, local concentration of authority means that in many places the central government's policies are not followed or enforced.
Secondly, the household registration system totally contradicts the market economy. Urban residents' grain and oil supplies are allocated according to their household registry, while farmers have to provide grain for free and purchase expensive production tools. The country is building its imbalanced system of heavy industry by plundering the farmers.
Since the introduction of the market economy, workers have been following the labor market, freely moving about the country in search of jobs. This has become an irreversible trend. However, the backward system, as well as some groups seeking to protect their own interests, go against the trend and deter system reform. The flow of labor from the countryside to the cities is referred to as a "blind flow" (people who blindly head for the cities without knowing what they will find there).
Employers recruit workers who meet their needs, but the workers are not allowed to shift their household registration to the city; a temporary residence permit is required for anyone who comes to a new place for more than three days, with the intention of working or doing business there.
Farmers cannot change their status as rural dwellers even after going to the cities to work, do business, invest in factories or buy houses. Therefore, new Chinese terms have appeared -- such as "farmer workers" and "farmer entrepreneurs." It seems that "farmer" carries the stigma of inferior birth, which can never be erased.
In addition, the household registration system is the evil root of many issues that threaten agriculture, the countryside and the farmers, and has seriously hindered the progress of urbanization. The current household registration system enables cities to exploit wealth and labor resources from the countryside without taking responsibility for the social burdens the new populations bring -- medical care, work-related injuries, care for the aged and children's education.
Local governments' per capita GDP and per capita expenditures do not include people who are not registered in that jurisdiction. State-owned banks do not grant loans to farmers, and rural postal savings services offer only savings but no loans. Each year 600 billion yuan (US$78 billion) flows into the cities from the countryside, which further helps maintain the prosperity of cities. It can be said that China's cities are developing at the expense of rural laborers, while poverty increases in rural areas. The household registration system widens the gap between city and countryside, and is a huge barrier for China's urbanization.
Furthermore, the current system violates the Constitution of the People's Republic of China and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and prevents citizens from enjoying their rights. The freedom to change one's residence is an important human right in modern countries. In China, people don't dare to seriously examine the right to free migration or the harm done by limiting migration rights. People seem to accept that China must limit migration rights because of its large population. However, the highest honor of a person is to safeguard individual dignity; the highest honor of a country is to protect its people's civil rights.
In fact, now only North Korea and Benin have household registration systems similar to China's, which separate people into urban and rural areas. Many countries have ID cards, social security cards or other population management systems.
Some Chinese officials think the household registration system is necessary for city management, and abolishing it will result in massive inflows of people to the cities, creating large slum areas. Nevertheless, the key to city management is establishing an ID information system that has nothing to do with household registration. Even if the current system did not exist, in the short term, the numbers of people coming to the cities would be limited by high living costs, expensive housing, limited employment opportunities and difficulties in providing education, medical care and elderly care. But in the long term, greater numbers of people moving to the cities fits in with the trend of urbanization in a developing country.
Now that China is becoming a world power, it should not restrict its citizens' freedom of migration, which is a basic human right. Abolishing the current household registration system is a fundamental step toward building a harmonious society for all the Chinese people.
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(Hu Xingdou is professor of economics and China issues at the Beijing Institute of Technology and an expert on social problems. This article is translated and edited from the Chinese. ©Copyright Hu Xingdou.)
