Chinese household registration system Essay

The issue I want to focus on is Chinese household registration (or Hukou) system and its reform.
To study Chinese household registration system, except the academic papers, we still need to pay attention to the political documents by Chinese central government, which keep shaping this policy. In this review, by reviewing three academic papers and three political documents, I will explain the starting point to understand this policy, and the most important connection between this policy and inequity, and whether it still matters and keeps producing inequity in China.
"The Household Registration System and Migrant Labor in China Note on a Debate" by Kam Wing Chan, published in Population and Development Review in June 2010 may be a good start to begin my discussion. In this review, by explaining where the household registration system comes from and why it has been continuously reformed since the 1970s, the author suggests a very important point the policy was rooted in Chinese socioeconomic structure and its development strategy. So, its reform always happens for corresponding to Chinese new socioeconomic situation and new macroeconomic aim.
Since 1949, according to President Mao's Utopianism in his brain, China should
rapidly drive for industrialization, especially the heavy industry. by concentrating all its resource and workforce, China focused on the most important mission
industrialization. So the authority should ensure the workforce in the urban area work in the factory and severe industrialization directly, at the same time tie up the pennant in a rural area and continuously supply the food and another source to the city, severing industrialization indirectly. Therefore, preventing them escaping from villages is the key. That is the logic behind the Hukou system.
But in the late 1970s and the following three decades, things changed. China started its great Reform and Opening, and took part in the world economy system as the label world factory. In reality, "Made in China" requires more workforce than before, and the new technology allows the less rural labor force to generate even more food. So the labor migration from country to city is needed and inevitable. That is why the ever seriously controlled Hukou policy has been persistently reformed little by little and keeps loosing since the 1970s.
So we can see it is not just a single policy, which doesn't stand alone in Chinese politic system and always serves the whole country's social and economic strategy. It has its own social and economic foundation and I think that is the key for us to understand this persistently changed policy.
But we should notice that neither absolutely preventing the rural labor force from flowing into the city in the 1950s or 60s, or controlling the scale of this kind of migration since 1970s is not the only function of Hukou system, even not the most important one. The key point is the social rights and citizenship attached to the two kinds of registration status, which create the most serious inequality issues. That is the second thing we need know about this policy.