Chinese Household Registration System Research Articles

Hukou Stratification and Job Precariousness between the State and Market Sectors in Contemporary China, 2010–2021

Echoing the global expansion of precarious employment, China has experienced a surge in labor flexibility and job deterioration since its integration into global capitalism. Existing research also highlighted the distinct features of the Chinese labor market related to its post-socialist nature. The Chinese household registration system, known as hukou, has been critical in explaining stratification and shaping labor market outcomes in China. However, hukou reforms in the recent decade have further relaxed restrictions on labor mobility and hukou conversion, suggesting that hukou may gradually lose its importance in transitional China. Building upon the global research on precarious work and dynamics of precariousness in employment in the Chinese context, I conceptualize job precariousness in the contemporary Chinese labor market in three dimensions. Using pooled data from the 2010 to 2021 Chinese General Social Survey, I examine how hukou stratification is associated with the three aspects of job precariousness, compare the relative importance of hukou with other market-related factors, and identify the disparities of the state and market sectors. The findings help contextualize global trends of precariousness by broadening the evidence base through a case in China.

Peasants' land rights and the hollowing out of communal property management in rural China

In recent years, China has strengthened the land rights of peasants while weakening the system of communal ownership of rural land. This study explores the rationale of land ownership policies enacted in China since 1978 to understand the trend toward privatization. Commonly, support for land ownership privatization has rested on two main assumptions. First, it is seen as a means to protect peasants’ interests and stimulate investment in agricultural production. Second, well-defined property rights may facilitate the transfer of land, thereby reducing transaction costs, and promoting the efficient utilization of land resources. However, this study finds that these assumptions in favor of strengthening peasants’ individual land rights are not borne out in the strategic behavior of land-rights holders. The ambiguity in how the Chinese household registration system qualifies who is a peasant, and thereby endowed with rights, has effectively allowed urban migrants to retain significant control over the majority of rural land while showing little interest in local village affairs. Quali¬tative research conducted in Anhui province reveals that instead of privatization promoting efficient land utilization, it creates a divide between land managed by local peasants who have remained committed to continuous cultivation and supplying fresh food, and land managed by absentees, which is often left idle for years or underutilized. This study contends that many elements of the increasingly marginalized communal land system are conducive to ensuring local food security, maintaining active rural governance, and preserving the social cohesion of rural communities.

Stratified financial inclusion in China based on hukou and its interaction with city and province development

ABSTRACT Financial inclusion (that is, access by individuals to the services provided by financial institutions such as banks, insurance, and investment firms) is a key condition for economic development, and forms one of the principal policy instruments in China for the promotion of rural-urban integration. Using data from the China Household Financial Studies (2013), this paper investigates the determinants of financial inclusion at the household level in China. Focused on the role of the Chinese household registration system (hukou), this paper proposes a new hukou typology to investigate the composite index of financial inclusion as well as the six indicators. Multilevel estimates reveal substantial differences of financial inclusion among different hukou holders; significant cross-level associations between hukou and economic development is also found, revealing the complex and non-linear relationship between hukou and financial inclusion. These findings shed light on the potential for market failures and two types of discrimination based on hukou system, which deny access to financial services to groups of people. Research implications on how to increase financial inclusion are mentioned and discussed.

Research on the Countermeasures to Promote the Optimal Allocation of Public Service Resources under Population Mobility

At the beginning of the establishment of Chinese household registration system, urban public services were linked to the household registration system and only provided to urban residents considering the actual supply capacity of cities. This move was also to adapt to the planned economy and industrial development needs. With the changing times and the needs of economic development, population flow policy has been lifted and population flow has accelerated. The problems of supply gap, unequal supply and low supply quality of public services have gradually emerged, and the allocation of public service resources is in urgent need of optimization. By combing the literature related to population mobility, household registration system and public service, this study traces the source contradictions from the theoretical and practical level and studies its development and evolution. In order to promote the optimal allocation of urban public service resources, combined with the actual urban development, Countermeasures and suggestions are put forward to promote the decoupling process of household registration system and urban public service supply, accelerate the implementation process of supporting reform, explore the further development of the form of voucher system government purchase of public services, and implement the differentiated allocation of resources for different public services.

Politics of Sweatshop Labour

This paper provides a political account of sweatshop labour by highlighting the role of political actors in establishing and sustaining exploitative working conditions in global sweatshops. In academic debates on sweatshop labor, the focus has been mostly on the responsibility of business or consumers (cf. Arnold and Bowie 2007, Meyers 2007, Zoller 2015), albeit there are some authors who deal with the role of trade unions and civil society (cf. Kabeer 2000). To provide a broader picture, I draw on the differentiation between extractive and inclusive institutions made by development economists Acemoglu and Robinson (2013) and apply this account to the sweatshop issue. I will argue that sweatshops are a political rather than an economic issue, and substantiate my claim by drawing on the Chinese household registration system hukou, and the political background conditions in Bangladesh.

Assessing the perceived changes in neighborhood physical and social environments and how they are associated with Chinese internal migrants\u2019 mental health

BackgroundMigrants experience substantial changes in their neighborhood physical and social environments along their migration journeys, but little is known about how perceived changes in their neighborhood environment pre- and post-migration correlate with their mental health. Our aim was to examine the associations between recalled changes in the perceived neighborhood physical and social environments and migrants’ mental health in the host city.MethodsWe used cross-sectional data on 591 migrants in Shenzhen, China. We assessed their risk of mental illness using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Neighborhood perceptions were collected retrospectively pre- and post-migration. We used random forests to analyze possibly non-linear associations between GHQ scores and changes in the neighborhood environment, variable importance, and for exploratory analysis of variable interactions.ResultsPerceived changes in neighborhood aesthetics, safety, and green space were non-linearly associated with migrants’ mental health: A decline in these characteristics was associated with poor mental health, while improvements in them were unrelated to mental health benefits. Variable importance showed that change in safety was the most influential neighborhood characteristic, although individual-level characteristics—such as self-reported physical health, personal income, and hukou (i.e., the Chinese household registration system)—appeared to be more important to explain GHQ scores and also strongly interacted with other variables. For physical health, we found different associations between changes in the neighborhood provoked by migration and mental health.ConclusionOur findings suggest that perceived degradations in the physical environment are related to poorer post-migration mental health. In addition, it seems that perceived changes in the neighborhood environment play a minor role compared to individual-level characteristics, in particular migrants’ physical health condition. Replication of our findings in longitudinal settings is needed to exclude reverse causality.

Prioritizing urban rivers' ecosystem services: An importance-performance analysis

The importance-performance analysis (IPA) has been developed and widely utilized to understand customer satisfaction and prioritize provision strategies based on the assumption that satisfaction is resultant from a preference (perceived importance) for a service and a relevant judgment of its performance. However, little work has been performed to examine to what degree different social groups are satisfied with diverse ecosystem services provided by urban rivers, being a unique yet underinvested public good. This study pioneers the IPA application to systematically analyze local communities' perceived importance of urban rivers' ecosystem services and their perceptions about how well those ecosystem services have been provided by urban rivers in Guangzhou (south China). We found notable importance-performance gaps for 10 out of 12 ecosystem services. The local residents were more dissatisfied with provision performance than the non-locals even though both groups of residents could explicitly recognize the importance of urban rivers' ecosystem services. Enhancement of water purification was ranked first amongst all ecosystem services by all respondents, irrespective of respondents' hukou status (Chinese household registration system) and residing environment. Thus, this ecosystem service should be prioritized in relevant management and restoration initiatives. These data provide an accurate picture of potential approaches for the improvement and prioritization of ecosystem services that would satisfy the respective target groups' needs. The IPA offers a mechanism to help match local residents' needs with ecosystem services provision. The IPA also has promise as a means of helping decision-makers and practitioners to communicate effectively with various social groups holding diverging expectations and levels of satisfaction. Such communication is essential to curate urban spaces enjoyed and appreciated by diverse social groups via inclusive urban ecosystem governance.

Modeling migration barriers in a two-sector framework: A welfare analysis of the hukou reform in China

The present paper constructs a two-sector labor market model for China featuring endogenous internal labor mobility and heterogeneous costs of migration induced by the Chinese household registration system (hukou). The main novelty of our model is to divide migrants into those with more family responsibilities and those with fewer to explain the empirical fact that almost all young people with rural hukou have migrated to cities, while people who stay in the rural area are older and have more family responsibilities. We conduct two policy experiments using the model: one experiment concerned with reducing costs of living for younger migrants and the other for older migrants. The main results are that the first policy would unambiguously increase social welfare, while the reduced-cost policy for older migrants would reduce poverty and inequality although some urban natives may experience a wage reduction.

The Low-end Locking Condition of Chinese Industrial System and Its Unlocking Paths: An Empirical Study Based on Correcting Distorted Urbanization Perspective

The relationship between economic development and social structural evolution is a projection of the paradoxical movement of productive forces and productive relations in social-economic field. After the reform and opening-up policy, China has been experiencing two significant revolutions in its economic field and social field respectively: one is the industrialization which leads to Chinese Economic Miracle, and the other is urbanization which helps to achieve the feat that five hundred million people civilized in just thirty years. However, when we re-examine this thirty-year construction and development process with quality-oriented perspective, the compression of time dimension exposes many problems in industrial development and urban construction, which mainly present as the low-end locking industrial system and the distorted urbanization. In this paper, we take the main line that distorted urbanization is one of the deep-seated social structure factor of Chinese low-end locking industrial system, and expand Chinese distorted urbanization into three dimensions: motivation distortion—the land urbanization problem, body distortion—the peasant-worker urbanization problem, and function distortion—the urban disease. We also expand Chinese low-end locking industrial system into two sectors: the secondary industry’s low-quality and the tertiary industry’s lag behind, and then we build the three dimensions—two sectors” analytical framework. Based on this framework, we analyze the low-end locking condition of Chinese industrial system by applying stylized facts and evaluation index, and then we give a discussion on the path selection of correcting distorted urbanization to unlock its low-end locking industrial system by building a PLS-SEM model. The results indicate that: (i) Chinese secondary industry’s low-quality present as the hindrance of structure evolution and the tardiness of efficiency promotion, and its tertiary industry’s lag behind present as the producer service industries’ insufficient ability in assisting production and the consumer service industries’ insufficient ability in guaranteeing consumption. (ii) Optimizing local financial and taxation system will lower the level of land urbanization and then generate unlocking effects to Chinese urbanization’s motivation distortion; improving the skill education for peasant-workers and reforming Chinese household registration system to narrow the gaps between peasant-workers and local workers will lower the level of peasant-worker urbanization and then generate unlocking effects to Chinese urbanization’s body distortion; reinforcing urban infrastructure construction, improving urban public service’s supplying and distribution, and optimizing the administrative process will lower the level of urban disease and then generate unlocking effects to Chinese urbanization’s function distortion.

Opportunity or new poverty trap: Rural-urban education disparity and internal migration in China

Despite its rapid economic growth, China has never managed to reduce its rural-urban divide with its reforms and marketization of the economy. The huge gap between urban and rural education is embedded in the disparity in educational investment, children's educational attainment, school quality and the returns to education. Migrant children move with their parents to urban cities to pursue a better education. However, the Chinese household registration system (hukou system) limits migrant children's rights and access to basic education in the cities. Will migrant children benefit from a better-quality education in the cities, or will they continue to be constrained by their hukou registration? Will the large-scale internal rural-urban migration provide the opportunity to reduce rural-urban education inequality in China, or will it merely create a new education-poverty trap? Based on publicly available large-scale survey data (RUMiC), this paper applies logistic regression and survival analysis to illustrate the new education-poverty trap imposed on migrant children by the institutional constraints and hierarchies in children's education, created by the Chinese household registration system in Chinese cities.

An exploration of organization dissent and workplace freedom of speech among young professional intra-urban migrants in Shanghai

ABSTRACTThis study explores the factors influencing the dissent behavior and perceptions of workplace freedom of speech among young Chinese professionals who are intra-urban migrants. It attempts to grasp the role of the Chinese household registration system, referred to as Hukou, in migrants’ professional and everyday life. Fourteen interviews were conducted with young, well-educated intra-urban migrants who possessed middle-income jobs but did not possess a Shanghai registration (Hukou). This study reveals that traditional Confucian values are significant in shaping Chinese migrant workers’ expressions of dissent and perceptions of workplace freedom of speech. Findings from this study demonstrate that further attention to professional migrants is warranted to understand their unique position in Chinese society. Internal migration is a global phenomenon particularly prominent in developing countries. This study is an attempt to shed light on internal migrant’s social and organizational life in developing economies.

The undeserving poor in China: the institutional logic of the minimum living standard scheme and the hukou system

ABSTRACTIn tandem with hukou, the Chinese household registration system, the Minimum Standard of Living Scheme (MSLS) may create an institutional melting pot from which negative perceptions continue to inform Chinese attitudes towards the poor. The theoretical point of departure for this paper connects the concept of deservingness with policy institutions. Based on the ISSP 2009 survey, and an examination of country-level differences in the association between perceptions of the poor on the one hand and perceptions of the unemployed and attitudes towards redistribution on the other, it is argued that the theory finds empirical support. The results stress that hukou reform and more inclusive welfare provision are important for improving social cohesion in China.

The Hybrid Hukou: A New Proposal to Enhance Labor Mobility in China

Since 1958, the Chinese household registration system, known in English as the hukou system (户口), has limited the ability of Chinese citizens to move from one area of the country to another. Under the hukou system, Chinese citizens who move from rural areas to urban areas are prevented from accessing many benefits that are available to their urban-registered peers, including education for their children. This prevents people from relocating to areas where they would be the most economically productive, and in turn contributes to economic and social inequality. The hukou system is also inconsistent with the obligations set forth by international human rights treaties, which China has ratified or may ratify in the future. This article will suggest that a new category of hukou registration could be created to enable migration to urban areas, promoting a gradual transition to urban registration. This new category, which I call the ‘hybrid hukou’ registration, would increase China’s economic productivity, decrease inequality, and enhance human rights in China. The ‘hybrid hukou’ registration would also give Chinese cities time to adjust to the influx of newcomers, which would likely result from greater mobility.

‘Moderate universalism’ in China and the Nordic countries: reviewing the major challenges in unemployment protection

Rapid welfare expansion is taking place in China across a range of policy fields. In the Nordic countries, intra-Nordic diversity and significant policy changes are not difficult to identify despite the notion of universal Nordic welfare regimes. This article will bridge these very different worlds of welfare in an effort to classify the Chinese unemployment-protection system with a comparative framework aimed at furthering the emerging Sino-Nordic research dialogue. This research dialogue has gained relevance in recent years with the new official Chinese goal of building a more universal welfare system. Welfare research that includes China from a comparative perspective is still extremely rare. Despite the lofty Chinese goals, many Chinese policy challenges still loom large. These are the rural-urban divide exacerbated by the Chinese household registration system, coverage of unemployment insurance and social assistance, inadequate and declining benefit levels, and, finally, funding issues. As this article will also substantiate, Denmark and Finland are something approaching best cases for illustrating intra-Nordic diversity. As regards the Chinese challenges, it is explained how they can to some extent be understood as the teething troubles of a developmental welfare state, since the Nordic counterparts have faced similar issues during their eras of welfare expansion.

‘Moderate universalism’ in China and the Nordic countries: Reviewing the major challenges in unemployment protection

Rapid welfare expansion is taking place in China across a range of policy fields. In the Nordic countries, intra-Nordic diversity and significant policy changes are not difficult to identify despite the notion of universal Nordic welfare regimes. This article will bridge these very different worlds of welfare in an effort to classify the Chinese unemployment-protection system with a comparative framework aimed at furthering the emerging Sino-Nordic research dialogue. This research dialogue has gained relevance in recent years with the new official Chinese goal of building a more universal welfare system. Welfare research that includes China from a comparative perspective is still extremely rare. Despite the lofty Chinese goals, many Chinese policy challenges still loom large. These are the rural-urban divide exacerbated by the Chinese household registration system, coverage of unemployment insurance and social assistance, inadequate and declining benefit levels, and, finally, funding issues. As this article will also substantiate, Denmark and Finland are something approaching best cases for illustrating intra-Nordic diversity. As regards the Chinese challenges, it is explained how they can to some extent be understood as the teething troubles of a developmental welfare state, since the Nordic counterparts have faced similar issues during their eras of welfare expansion.

The development of the Chinese household registration system and its influence on the current economic development of the country

In the paper we analyze the development of the Chinese household registration system, the hukou system, since its establishment in the 1950s until today and its influence on the economic development of the PRC. Surplus labour force was released from agriculture when the household responsibility system was introduced. Its allocation into more productive sectors of the economy was conditioned by the reform of the hukou system, which served to prevent the migration of rural population to cities. The hukou system is discriminatory for rural-urban migrants and currently hinders the effective utilization of labour. Furthermore, the relaxing of the system would most likely lead to an increase in consumption levels among Chinese households.

The household registration system and social stratification in China: 1955-1996.

The Chinese household registration system (hukou), which divides the population into "agricultural" and "nonagricultural" sectors, may be the most important determinant of differential privileges in state socialist China, determining access to good jobs, education for one's children, housing, health care, and even the right to move to a city. Transforming one's hukou status from rural to urban is a central aspect of upward social mobility. Using data from a 1996 national probability sample, we show that education and membership in the Chinese Communist Party are the main determinants of such mobility.