Abstract
China’s New-type Urbanisation Plan heralded a new phase of reform of the household registration ( hukou) system and initiated a nation-wide reconfiguration of hukou policy in Chinese cities. This study reveals that the former localisation of hukou policymaking has been brought to greater uniformity under the current central guidelines. The liberalisation of hukou conversion has been expanded to many large cities that previously employed selective migrant integration policies. Mega-cities have recalibrated the selection criteria for new citizens, elevating the importance of settlement duration and moderating the importance of educational and professional qualifications. Case studies in Guangdong further reveal the dynamic interactions among different levels of government in the course of reform. Local policy experimentations set important precedents for central policymaking, and the central guidelines are enforcing new adjustments in local implementation. The provincial government plays a prominent role in coordinating top-down directives and local conditions.
Highlights
China’s Household Registration System, or the hukou (户口) system, is one of the major institutional legacies from the pre-reform period
Through tracing local hukou policy developments in four large cities in Guangdong Province over the past decade, this section shows how local hukou policies co-evolve with the underlying policy process
Former Guangdong cadres Wang Yang and Liu Kun participated extensively in the provincial reforms (Zheng, 2019), and both were promoted to the central leadership by Xi Jinping
Summary
China’s Household Registration System, or the hukou (户口) system, is one of the major institutional legacies from the pre-reform period. Under the general goal to “facilitate the reform of social governance systems,” the 2008 Outline encourages cities in the Pearl River Delta to (1) unify urban and rural hukou types into resident hukou; (2) relax hukou conversion measures in small and medium-sized municipalities and to gradually allow peasants with stable employment and residence to become urban residents; (3) improve hukou conversion measures for skilled migrants with intermediate professional certification or above; (4) experiment and develop the points system for migrant population governance; (5) fully implement the residence permit system and incorporate multiple functions in one identification document (NDRC, 2008, chapter 10). In Dongguan and Zhongshan, the points system remains in place to allocate educational resources to migrant children based on their parents’ education attainment, property ownership, and tax contributions (Dongguan Municipal Government, 2017; Office for Migrant Population Management in Zhongshan, 2018)
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