China’s notorious hukou system, the household registration system, is seeing some changes in the new year 2020. The system will be eliminated in cities with less than three million residents; and in cities with population of three million to five million, rules of the hukou system will be relaxed.
The media compares the decision to a Christmas gift for China’s 290 million migrant workers. Simply put, the hukou system in communist China has divided Chinese people based on their birthplace into agricultural hukou and urban hukou. Despite that tens of millions of migrant workers—the rural population—move to big cities to work, marry and even die, they and their children are not entitled to the medical, education and retirement benefits of the adopted cities.
In recent years, local governments of Chinese big cities are adopting a point-based system to vet applicants for urban hukou. This is similar to the immigration policies in some Western countries, such as Australia and Canada. Applicants are evaluated based on their education, work experience and talents.
The immigration issue is a hot stick in the US, so is the domestic migration in China. Because of the abolished One-Child Policy, four hundred million unborn babies have disappeared during the thirty years of the draconian family planning law. Chinese aging population outnumbers the working labor force. That’s why China is spending a lot of money on AI technology—high productivity with small labor. Productivity boosts economy; economy stimulates consumption; consumption triggers demands.
I don’t see China will open its door for foreign-born citizens to become Chinese nationals in the near future. Looking around the neighboring East Asian countries: Japan has the same issue of aging population and low fertility rate, as is South Korea. But the difference is South Korea welcomes foreign workers; and Japan is slowly relaxing its immigration law but its legislation is not as fast as its robotics development. The gray-haired Japanese seniors are more likely to depend on robots than working-age humans for long-term care.
To relax the hukou system and even abolish it like the One-Child Policy is inevitable for Chinese leadership. The US-China trade war wakes up China to boost domestic consumption in order to maintain the 6.0 and above percent of annual GDP growth. Urbanization gives the perfect environment to stimulate domestic consumption. Therefore, the Christmas gift for migrant workers to settle in medium to small cities is also a long-term strategy for China to find an alternative alongside the sole dependence on manufacturing for foreign exports.
In my memoir Golden Orchid, I’ve made my point that China’s fast-changing policies affect several generations, in particular under communist rule. Tens of millions of Chinese workers were laid off due to the state-owned enterprise reform in the 1990s. Their children—most of them with urban hukou—had some tough years when their jobless parents could not meet both ends. The One-Child Policy has caused the-one-and-only only-child generation to take on a heavier social obligation than any predecessors to support the citywide welfare system.
As for the hukou system, it is not invented by the communists. The system has been in used since ancient China to keep track of who was in what family. However, under communist rule, the hukou system has become a tool for the top leaders to restrict movement and economic benefits of rural people and to create hereditary privileges of the urbanites. The relaxation of the system only means migrant workers and their children will contribute to the economic sustainability of the party’s coffers in exchange for a candy of social security. After all, to become new residents with urban hukou in mega cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chongqing, is off limits.
Happy New Year to all my readers!
