Now to move in
IT WAS one of Mao Zedong's many big ideas, and thus far one of his most enduring. In the late 1950s, at the time of the “great leap forward”, China established its hukou, or household registration system, which required people to live and work only where they were officially permitted to. For a government intent on running its economy according to a strict central plan, it was well to have people stay where they were told. For China's hundreds of millions of rural dwellers it made leaving their village nearly as difficult as leaving the country.
Over the past 20 years China has moved steadily further from central planning, and workers have moved in huge numbers away from the nation's economically backward countryside to its far more vibrant cities. According to official estimates, China's migrant labour force now numbers somewhere around 100m. The government expects another 46m to come looking for jobs in the cities in the next five years as the number of surplus rural workers swells to 150m.
In light of such numbers, China's announcement on August 16th that it plans to revamp the registration system seems a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. But if the government carries through with its plan to abolish restrictions on labour mobility, it will in fact make a huge difference to the lives of those migrants.
Many of today's migrant labourers still find it exhausting to get permission to move. They can spend months upon months of their time chasing—and paying for—the dozen or so certificates and approvals needed to live and work legally under the hukou system. By the time they get the last of the necessary documents, the first may have lapsed. At the end of it all, they have only temporary and limited residence privileges. Not surprisingly, some migrants choose to take jobs on building sites or handling rubbish with no documentation at all. They earn far less than legal workers, and are vulnerable to mistreatment if they get caught by the police.
Now, according to China's powerful State Development and Planning Commission, the government is working on a plan that will do away with migration restrictions over the next five years and create a unified national labour market. The newly liberated workers will be able to contribute to a pension fund wherever they are, and carry their benefits from place to place. On August 27th the Ministry of Public Security, the main administrator of the hukou system, confirmed its support for the reforms. The old system, the authorities say, put “excessive restraints” on mobility and hindered the distribution of labour according to market demand.
While that is clearly true, it has also helped avert an outcome that many of China's urban dwellers dread: an unrestrained influx into the cities of people from the countryside. While city people are glad to have enough migrants to handle the jobs they themselves do not want, they fear that too many will put unbearable strain on housing, communications and other resources. Some municipal governments have already tinkered with existing rules to admit only “desirable” outsiders. The cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai offer residency to those who can buy property, and Beijing grants documentation to technical workers with senior qualifications. In light of such distinctions, Anita Chan of the Australian National University's China and Korea Centre has likened the hukou system to South Africa's apartheid. While the discrimination in China is not racial, she notes that “the underlying economic logic of the system” has been based on similar mechanisms of regulating the supply of cheap labour and abusing the rights of migrants.
Miss Chan wonders whether restrictions will in fact be abolished on equal terms for skilled and unskilled workers. In the private view of one Chinese sociologist in a government think-tank, the answer is clear. Regardless of what the authorities say, China's largest cities will never allow in unrestricted numbers of rural dwellers. “Everyone knows that there would be utter chaos if there were really no restrictions. And that will never be allowed to happen.”
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Off to the city"