Posted on 7-11-2002

Chinese Wall
Full article at oneworld.net

The massive rural-to-urban migrations that have occurred in China during
the reform era have led some commentators to claim that the residence
registration (hukou) system is no longer operational. The corollary of this
is the idea that migrants who settle in China's cities will be eligible for
the same benefits and entitlements as urban residents.

In fact, the hukou system, under which individuals and families are tied to
a particular place and divided into urban or rural categories, remains the
key to understanding the institutionalized exclusion that keeps the rural
poor out of China's cities. Although the Chinese government began to
announce "reforms" of the hukou system in the mid-1990s, these were not
aimed at ending the controls on migration instituted in the first years of
the PRC or at the eventual elimination of the hukou system. Instead, they
have constructed complex new barriers to migrants' entry into the cities
and a web of discriminatory rules that effectively put them in a similar
situation to "guest workers" or illegal immigrants in rich countries.

The authorities have never ceased their efforts to control migration. The
clearest evidence of the authorities' insistence on shutting the poorest
out of China's major cities is the rapid growth of detention under Custody
and Repatriation, which has more than tripled over the space of a decade,
reaching over 3.2 million instances of detention in the year 2000. Official
sources indicate that the "vast majority" of detainees are internal
migrants, particularly those from rural areas.

However, the hukou system is merely the means to enforcing divisions
created by inequitable and discriminatory investment and development
policies. The continuing control of migration reflects the enormous gulf
between countryside and city, a major factor in China achieving the dubious
distinction of now being among the most unequal societies in the world. By
shutting the poorest out of the centers of power, it allows the authorities
to continue to ignore their plight with relative impunity.

The focus of this report is the legal status of internal migrants in four
of China's major cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. It
describes the discriminatory laws and policies that make internal migrants
into second class citizens, essentially leaving 10 to 20 percent of the
poorest residents of these cities virtually without rights. Since the
poorest and most vulnerable among the rural-to-urban migrants are least
able to circumvent the mechanisms of control, due to their lack of money
and influence, and are most likely to be subject to official and popular
discrimination, their experience is the report's principal subject matter.