Urbanization with Chinese Characteristics: The Hukou System and Migration by Kam Wing Chan

Author:Kam Wing Chan [Chan, Kam Wing]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367264826
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

THE LABOR MARKETS OF CHINA

Despite three decades of reforms, the Chinese economy and society still maintain a dual structure (eryuan jiegou), set up in the 1950s in order to pursue the Big Push industrialization program. Under this institutional design, the industrial sector, mostly located in cities, has been nationalized and designated to become a priority subsystem of the country’s economy. Placed under strict state management, the industrial subsystem benefitted from strong state support and protection. The state provided subsidies and basic entitlements to urban workers and their families in an effort to maintain social and political stability within the subsystem (Chan, 2009a).

The other subsystem comprised the low-priority, agricultural/rural sector, encompassing roughly 85 percent of the population in the 1950s, and about 60 percent at present. Remaining outside of the state’s welfare system, it was largely treated as a “residual” component, essentially as a provider of cheap raw materials (including food), labor, and capital for the urban-industrial sector (as well as a reservoir of surplus labor, discussed below).3 The rural population had no claim on national resources and was expected to fend for itself except in emergencies such as natural disasters (e.g., floods and earthquakes). Peasants were expected to tend the land largely in return for subsistence levels of compensation; they were excluded from state-provided employment and safety nets, and denied the right to move to the cities. The unequal treatment of the rural population created two almost totally different societies, as noted over the years by concerned investigators (e.g., Guo and Liu, 1990; Chan, 1994; Wang, 2005; Naughton, 2007). While all peasants have been allowed to seek jobs in the cities since the late 1970s, the broader framework of differential access to welfare and employment remains basically unchanged (and it has shaped the structure of China’s labor markets). A major mechanism that maintains this dual form of “citizenship” is the hukou or household registration system. The urban-industrial population is eligible to receive urban hukou, whereas peasants hold only rural hukou. Conversions from rural to urban hukou are generally not possible, except under a few highly circumscribed conditions.4

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