The Chinese hukou system

“The hukou (household registration) system is often considered as unique to China. Although China's system of controlling and regulating internal movements of its citizens is indeed far more elaborate than that in almost all other countries in the world, a broader survey reveals that a similar system existed or still exists in other (former) communist countries, such as the ho khau system in Vietnam and the hoju system in present-day North Korea. In fact, these migration control systems, the Chinese one included, owe much of their common origin to the propiska (internal passport) system utilized in the former USSR ....

What is unique about migration in China is that the two aspects of internal migration (movement and citizenship) can be totally disparate; i.e., one can move to a new place (for example, because of a job change) but can be permanently barred access to community membership-based services and welfare. People who have moved to a new place but do not possess local citizenship (hukou) are referred to as the non-hukou population, meaning that they are not de jure residents even though they are de facto residents. Conceptually, this is the group that has moved away from the location where their hukou is registered. The situation of Chinese migrants without citizenship, of course, is not unique in the international context of migration. Many so-called "guest laborers" working in foreign countries, sometimes for years, without local citizenship, fall into this category. But few countries have applied such a system to their own citizens in modern times. In China, this group is commonly called the "floating population" or "mobile population" (liudong renkou). Its size has grown rapidly from a few million in the early 1980s to the present level of about 150 million. ....

As I finish this retrospective on the Chinese hukou system at its semicentenary, it is my earnest wish that no one will have occasion to write on its centennial. The present version of the system is not deserving of such longevity.”

Kam Wing Chan, "The Chinese Hukou System at 50", Eurasian Geography and Economics 50:2 (March 2009), pp. 197-221.

http://courses.washington.edu/chinageo/Chan-Hukou50-EGE2009.pdf


University of Washington geographer Kam Wing Chan has written a superb overview of China's hukou (household registration) system that was promulgated in January 1958 and is still in effect. The system took away a basic right of Chinese citizens, the freedom to choose one's place of residence. It discriminates against 800 million rural residents and allows the State to treat 150 million internal migrants as 'guest workers' in their own country. Professor Chan is also author of Cities with Invisible Walls: Reinterpreting Urbanization in Post-1949 China (Oxford University Press, New York, 1994).


A registration record includes such information as the name of the person, date of birth, names of parents and spouse, if married, and identifies the person as a resident of an area. Family registers have existed in China for millennia and have developed over time into a means to support taxation, conscription and social control. In modern times they have been used by the state for purposes of population management control of emigration and immigration from urban and rural area within China. In modern times such movements have been tightly controlled.

Consistent with a socialist economy, the system has been used to regulate labor so as to ensure an adequate supply of low-cost labor to state-owned businesses. It has also been used to monitor and control people who are regarded as politically unreliable.

While the system has weakened in recent decades with the introduction of market reforms, it still exists and remains as an oppression on the Chinese people and a warning to the American people of the potential loss of liberty caused by too much personal information and authority in the hands of the state.


Thanks to Larry Willmore for the Tdj.