Hukou
Encyclopedia
A Hukou or huji refers to the system of 'class system' residency permits which dates back to ancient China, where household registration is required by law in People's Republic of China
(China) and Republic of China
(Taiwan).
A household registration record officially identifies a person as a resident of an area and includes identifying information such as name, parents, spouse, and date of birth.
A hukou can also refer to a family register
in many contexts since the household registration record is issued per family, and usually includes the births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and moves, of all members in the family. A similar household registration system exists within the public administration structures of Japan
(koseki
), Vietnam
(Hộ khẩu), and North Korea
(Hoju
). In South Korea
the Hoju
system was abolished on 1 January 2008.
s were in existence in China as early as the Xia Dynasty
(c. 2100 BCE - 1600 BCE). In the centuries which followed, the family register developed into an organization of families and clans for purposes of taxation, conscription and social control.
According to the Examination of Hukou in Wenxian Tongkao
published in 1317, there was a minister for population management during the Zhou Dynasty
named Simin , who was responsible for recording births, deaths, emigrations and immigrations. The Rites of Zhou
notes that three copies of documents were kept in different places. The administrative divisions in Zhou Dynasty were a function of the distance to the state capital. The top division nearest the capital was named Dubi , top division in more distant areas were named Xiang and Sui . Families are organized under the Baojia system
.
Guan Zhong
, Prime Minister of the Qi state
7th century BCE, imposed different taxation and conscription policies on different areas. In addition, Guan Zhong also banned immigration, emigration, and separation of families without permission. In the Book of Lord Shang
, Shang Yang
also described his policy restricting immigrations and emigrations.
Xiao He
, the first Chancellor of the Han Dynasty
, added the chapter of Hu as one of the nine basic laws of Han , and established the Hukou system as the basis of tax revenue and conscription.
instigated a command economy when it came to power in 1949. In 1958, the Chinese government officially promulgated the family register system to control the movement of people between urban and rural areas. Individuals were broadly categorised as a "rural" or "urban" worker. A worker seeking to move from the country to urban areas to take up non-agricultural work would have to apply through the relevant bureaucracies. The number of workers allowed to make such moves was tightly controlled. Migrant workers would require six passes to work in provinces other than their own. People who worked outside their authorized domain or geographical area would not qualify for grain rations, employer-provided housing, or health care. There were controls over education, employment, marriage and so on.
s of the Soviet Union
, the hukou system allowed the state to provide preferential treatment to industrial workers and intelligentsia who would be more likely to protest and even revolt during periods of unrest.
For some time, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security
continued to justify the hukou system on public order grounds, and also provided demographic data for government central planning.
The Hukou system has been justified by some scholars as increasing the stability of China by better monitoring of "targeted persons", people who are politically dubious by the Party's standards. This is still a significant function as of 2006.
Administration regulations issued in 1982 known as "custody and repatriation
" authorized police to detain people, and "repatriate" them to their permanent residency location.
Although an individual is technically required to live in the area designated on his/her permit, in practice the system has largely broken down. After the Chinese economic reform
s, it became possible for some to unofficially migrate and get a job without a valid permit. Economic reforms also created pressures to encourage migration from the interior to the coast. It also provided incentives for officials not to enforce regulations on migration.
Technology has made it easier to enforce the Hukou system as now the police force has a national database of official Hukou registrations. This was made possible by computerisation in the 1990s, as well as greater co-operation between the different regional police authorities.
from 1958 to 1962, having an urban versus a rural hukou could mean the difference between life and death. During this period, nearly all of the approximately 600 million rural hukou residents were collectivized into village communal farms, where their agricultural output - after state taxes - would be their only source of food. With institutionalized exaggeration of output figures by local Communist leaders and massive declines in production, state taxes during those years confiscated nearly all food in many rural communes, leading to mass starvation and the deaths of more than 30 million Chinese.
The 100 million urban hukou residents, however, were fed by fixed food rations established by the central government, which declined to an average of 1500 calories per day at times but still allowed survival for almost all during the famine. An estimated 95% or higher of all deaths occurred among rural hukou holders. With the suppression of news internally, many city residents were not aware that mass deaths were occurring in the countryside at all, which was essential to preventing organized opposition to Mao's scheme.
Many of the starving peasants tried to flee to the cities to beg for food, but tight security at entry points and through regular inspections of resident documents on the streets led to the deportation and subsequent death of most. In fact, it was only when rural family members of higher military officers, who were often isolated from the countryside in cities or bases, began dying from starvation that higher Communist officials began seriously worrying about the stability of the state, and eventually forced Mao to end the program. This was the most extreme demonstration of how much impact a different hukou could have in China, but significant interference in all aspects of life only began declining in the 1980s and 1990s.
From 1978 to 2001, as China transitioned from state socialism to market capitalism, export-processing zones were created in city suburbs, where mostly female migrants worked under conditions considered far below contemporary standards of western nations. Restrictions placed on the mobility of migrant workers were pervasive, and transient workers were forced to live a precarious existence in company dormitories or shanty towns, and suffered abusive consequences.
The impact of the hukou system on migrant laborers became particularly onerous in the 1980s after hundreds of millions of them were forced out of state corporations and co-operatives. Since the 1980s, an estimated 200 million Chinese live outside their officially-registered areas, with much less access to education
and government services, and in several respects occupy a social and economic status similar to illegal immigrant
s. The millions of peasants who have since quit the land remain stuck at the margins of urban society, and have been blamed for the rising crime and unemployment. Under pressure from their citizens, city governments impose discriminatory rules.
For example, the children of "Nong Min Gong - 农民工" (workers who come from counties) are not allowed to enter city schools with their parents, even now they have to live with their grandparents or uncles in order to go to their local hometown schools in counties. They are called home-staying children by Chinese governments. Chinese researchers reported that there are about 130 million home-staying children without parents year by year.
Two areas differ from South Africa
's apartheid system: Firstly, under a system called xia fang, or "sending down", individuals or groups of urban workers were sometimes re-classified as rural workers and banished to the countryside (at lower wages and benefits), often as a sentence for "bourgeois imperialist crimes" during the Cultural Revolution
; by contrast, white workers in South Africa were never sent to work in Bantustans. Second, the ideology driving China's apartheid system was Maoism
, not racism
. More significantly it is possible to move up from a rural to an urban hukou by obtaining a college degree and gaining employment with a corporation or the government.
Some China-based scholars claim that though the Hukou system is discriminatory, it is not significantly different than the passport system keeping people from developing countries from resettling in the West; other than the people being China born citizens.
On the other hand, there has been recognition for some time that hukou is an impediment to economic development. China's accession to the World Trade Organisation has forced it to embrace this reform to liberalise the movement of labour, speeding up its economic reform.
The system has undergone further relaxation since the mid 1990s. The first relaxation allowed rural residents to buy a temporary urban residency permit, meaning they could work legally; fees for these decreased gradually to a fairly affordable level. The discrimination against rural women has been alleviated from 1998, when hukou became inheritable through either the father’s or the mother’s line.
From 2001 onwards, hukou controls were weakened. In 2003, after the uproar surrounding the death of Sun Zhigang alarmed the authorities, the laws on Custody and repatriation were repealed; by 2004 the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture estimated that over 100 million people registered as "rural" were working in cities.
Chan and Buckingham's (2008) article, "Is China Abolishing its Hukou System," argues that previous reforms have not fundamentally changed the hukou system. Instead, reforms have only decentralized hukou control to local governments. The contemporary hukou system remains potent and continues to serve as one of the key institutions perpetuating China's rural-urban disparity.
The system is currently only partially enforced, and it has been argued that the system will have to be further relaxed in order to increase availability of skilled workers to industries.
was under Japanese rule
from 1895 to 1945, the Japanese government maintained the same system of household registration (koseki) as they did in other parts of the Empire of Japan
. This system of household registration, with minor changes, has been continued. Records concerning native Taiwanese are fairly complete. Records of mainlanders date back to the date they first applied for registration with the local household registration office, and are based on information provided by the applicant.
While all ROC nationals, including overseas Chinese
with no connection to Taiwan, can apply for a ROC passport, proper household registration is required for obtaining a ROC ID Card, which is often used as proof of citizenship, such as in national elections, and an ID number is needed to open bank accounts. Unlike in China, residency can be easily changed with the local authorities and household registration does not serve as a tool to limit a resident's movements within Taiwan.
and Macau
, though identification cards are mandatory for residents there.
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
(China) and Republic of China
Republic of China
The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...
(Taiwan).
A household registration record officially identifies a person as a resident of an area and includes identifying information such as name, parents, spouse, and date of birth.
A hukou can also refer to a family register
Family register
A family register is a registry used in many countries to track information of a genealogical or legal interest.Often, official recognition of certain events or status may only be granted when such event or status is registered in the...
in many contexts since the household registration record is issued per family, and usually includes the births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and moves, of all members in the family. A similar household registration system exists within the public administration structures of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
(koseki
Koseki
A is a Japanese family registry. Japanese law requires all Japanese households to report births, acknowledgements of paternity, adoptions, disruptions of adoptions, deaths, marriages and divorces of Japanese citizens to their local authority, which compiles such records encompassing all Japanese...
), Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
(Hộ khẩu), and North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
(Hoju
Hoju
The Hoju scheme is a family register system in North and South Korea. Hoju means the 'head of the family', Hojuje is the 'head of the family' system, and Hojeok is the 'family register'.It is similar to the Japanese Koseki and the Chinese Hukou system.It has been controversial as being innately...
). In South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
the Hoju
Hoju
The Hoju scheme is a family register system in North and South Korea. Hoju means the 'head of the family', Hojuje is the 'head of the family' system, and Hojeok is the 'family register'.It is similar to the Japanese Koseki and the Chinese Hukou system.It has been controversial as being innately...
system was abolished on 1 January 2008.
Nomenclature
The formal name for the system is "huji." Within the huji system, a "hukou" is the registered residency status of a particular individual in this system. "Hukou" is more commonly used in everyday conversation. "Hukou" has been adopted by English-language audiences to refer to both the huji system and an individual's hukou.History
Family registerFamily register
A family register is a registry used in many countries to track information of a genealogical or legal interest.Often, official recognition of certain events or status may only be granted when such event or status is registered in the...
s were in existence in China as early as the Xia Dynasty
Xia Dynasty
The Xia Dynasty is the first dynasty in China to be described in ancient historical chronicles such as Bamboo Annals, Classic of History and Records of the Grand Historian. The Xia Dynasty was established by the legendary Yu the Great after Shun, the last of the Five Emperors gave his throne to him...
(c. 2100 BCE - 1600 BCE). In the centuries which followed, the family register developed into an organization of families and clans for purposes of taxation, conscription and social control.
According to the Examination of Hukou in Wenxian Tongkao
Wenxian Tongkao
The Wenxian Tongkao or Tongkao was one of the model works of the Tongdian compiled by Ma Duanlin in 1317.-References:*Dong, Enlin, et al. . Historial Literature and Cultural Studies. Wuhan: Hubei Dictionary Press. ISBN 7-5403-0512-6*Xu, Guanglie, . Encyclopedia of China, 1st ed.-External links:* -...
published in 1317, there was a minister for population management during the Zhou Dynasty
Zhou Dynasty
The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...
named Simin , who was responsible for recording births, deaths, emigrations and immigrations. The Rites of Zhou
Rites of Zhou
The Rites of Zhou , also known as Zhouguan, is one of three ancient ritual texts listed among the classics of Confucianism. It was later renamed Zhouli by Liu Xin to differentiate it from a chapter in the Classic of History which was also known as Zhouguan.Though tradition ascribed the text of the...
notes that three copies of documents were kept in different places. The administrative divisions in Zhou Dynasty were a function of the distance to the state capital. The top division nearest the capital was named Dubi , top division in more distant areas were named Xiang and Sui . Families are organized under the Baojia system
Baojia system
The baojia system was an invention of Wang Anshi of the Song Dynasty, who created this community-based system of law enforcement and civil control that was included in his large reform of Chinese government from 1069-1076.-Imperial China:...
.
Guan Zhong
Guan Zhong
Guǎn Zhòng was a politician and statesman during the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese history. His given name was Yíwú . Zhong was his courtesy name. Recommended by Bao Shuya, he was appointed Prime Minister by Duke Huan of Qi in 685 BC.-Achievements:Guan Zhong modernized the Qi State by...
, Prime Minister of the Qi state
Qi (state)
Qi was a powerful state during the Spring and Autumn Period and Period of the Warring States in ancient China. Its capital was Linzi, now part of the modern day city of Zibo in Shandong Province....
7th century BCE, imposed different taxation and conscription policies on different areas. In addition, Guan Zhong also banned immigration, emigration, and separation of families without permission. In the Book of Lord Shang
The Book of Lord Shang
The Book of Lord Shang was an early Legalist work generally attributed to the eponymous Lord Shang. It is a foundational work of that harsh tradition: ""The Book of Lord Shang teaches that laws are designed to maintain the stability of the state from the people, who are innately selfish and ignorant...
, Shang Yang
Shang Yang
Shang Yang was an important statesman of the State of Qin during the Warring States Period of Chinese history. Born Wei Yang in the State of Wei, with the support of Duke Xiao of Qin Yang enacted numerous reforms in Qin...
also described his policy restricting immigrations and emigrations.
Xiao He
Xiao He
Xiao He was a Chinese statesman who lived during the early Han Dynasty. He served Liu Bang during the insurrection against the Qin Dynasty, and fought on Liu's side in the Chu–Han contention against Xiang Yu. After the founding of the Han Dynasty, Xiao He became chancellor and held office until...
, the first Chancellor of the Han Dynasty
Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
, added the chapter of Hu as one of the nine basic laws of Han , and established the Hukou system as the basis of tax revenue and conscription.
Household registration in China
The Communist PartyCommunist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
instigated a command economy when it came to power in 1949. In 1958, the Chinese government officially promulgated the family register system to control the movement of people between urban and rural areas. Individuals were broadly categorised as a "rural" or "urban" worker. A worker seeking to move from the country to urban areas to take up non-agricultural work would have to apply through the relevant bureaucracies. The number of workers allowed to make such moves was tightly controlled. Migrant workers would require six passes to work in provinces other than their own. People who worked outside their authorized domain or geographical area would not qualify for grain rations, employer-provided housing, or health care. There were controls over education, employment, marriage and so on.
Rationale
With its large rural population of poor farm workers, hukou limited mass migration from the land to the cities to ensure some structural stability. The hukou system was an instrument of the command economy. By regulating labour, it ensured an adequate supply of low cost workers to the plethora of state owned businesses. Like the internal passportInternal passport
An internal passport is an identity document used in some countries to control the internal movement and residence of its people. Countries that currently have internal passports include Russia, Ukraine, China and North Korea...
s of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, the hukou system allowed the state to provide preferential treatment to industrial workers and intelligentsia who would be more likely to protest and even revolt during periods of unrest.
For some time, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security
Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
The Ministry of Public Security , is the principal police and security authority of the mainland of the People's Republic of China and the government agency that exercises oversight over and is ultimately responsible for day-to-day law enforcement...
continued to justify the hukou system on public order grounds, and also provided demographic data for government central planning.
The Hukou system has been justified by some scholars as increasing the stability of China by better monitoring of "targeted persons", people who are politically dubious by the Party's standards. This is still a significant function as of 2006.
Enforcement
From around 1953 to 1976, Police would periodically round up those who were without valid residence permit, place them in detention centres and expel them from cities.Administration regulations issued in 1982 known as "custody and repatriation
Custody and repatriation
Custody and repatriation was an administrative procedure, established in 1982 and ended in 2003, by which the police in the People's Republic of China could detain people if they did not have a residence permit or temporary living permit , and return them to the place where they could legally...
" authorized police to detain people, and "repatriate" them to their permanent residency location.
Although an individual is technically required to live in the area designated on his/her permit, in practice the system has largely broken down. After the Chinese economic reform
Chinese economic reform
The Chinese economic reform refers to the program of economic reforms called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" in the People's Republic of China that were started in December 1978 by reformists within the Communist Party of China led by Deng Xiaoping.China had one of the world's largest...
s, it became possible for some to unofficially migrate and get a job without a valid permit. Economic reforms also created pressures to encourage migration from the interior to the coast. It also provided incentives for officials not to enforce regulations on migration.
Technology has made it easier to enforce the Hukou system as now the police force has a national database of official Hukou registrations. This was made possible by computerisation in the 1990s, as well as greater co-operation between the different regional police authorities.
During the Great Leap Forward's famine
During the mass famine of the Great Leap ForwardGreat Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
from 1958 to 1962, having an urban versus a rural hukou could mean the difference between life and death. During this period, nearly all of the approximately 600 million rural hukou residents were collectivized into village communal farms, where their agricultural output - after state taxes - would be their only source of food. With institutionalized exaggeration of output figures by local Communist leaders and massive declines in production, state taxes during those years confiscated nearly all food in many rural communes, leading to mass starvation and the deaths of more than 30 million Chinese.
The 100 million urban hukou residents, however, were fed by fixed food rations established by the central government, which declined to an average of 1500 calories per day at times but still allowed survival for almost all during the famine. An estimated 95% or higher of all deaths occurred among rural hukou holders. With the suppression of news internally, many city residents were not aware that mass deaths were occurring in the countryside at all, which was essential to preventing organized opposition to Mao's scheme.
Many of the starving peasants tried to flee to the cities to beg for food, but tight security at entry points and through regular inspections of resident documents on the streets led to the deportation and subsequent death of most. In fact, it was only when rural family members of higher military officers, who were often isolated from the countryside in cities or bases, began dying from starvation that higher Communist officials began seriously worrying about the stability of the state, and eventually forced Mao to end the program. This was the most extreme demonstration of how much impact a different hukou could have in China, but significant interference in all aspects of life only began declining in the 1980s and 1990s.
Effect on rural workers
From around 1953 to 1976, the enforcement of non-portable rights associated with one's domicile created an underclass. Urban dwellers enjoyed a range of social, economic and cultural benefits while China's 800 million rural residents were treated as second-class citizens. However, the ruling party made some concessions to rural workers to make life in rural areas "survivable... if not easy or pleasant".From 1978 to 2001, as China transitioned from state socialism to market capitalism, export-processing zones were created in city suburbs, where mostly female migrants worked under conditions considered far below contemporary standards of western nations. Restrictions placed on the mobility of migrant workers were pervasive, and transient workers were forced to live a precarious existence in company dormitories or shanty towns, and suffered abusive consequences.
The impact of the hukou system on migrant laborers became particularly onerous in the 1980s after hundreds of millions of them were forced out of state corporations and co-operatives. Since the 1980s, an estimated 200 million Chinese live outside their officially-registered areas, with much less access to education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
and government services, and in several respects occupy a social and economic status similar to illegal immigrant
Illegal Aliens
Illegal Aliens is a 2007 film starring Anna Nicole Smith and Joanie Laurer. This comedy/science-fiction film is made in the mold of classic 1980s B-movies. Hitting stores on May 1, 2007, the release of the movie was pushed back following the death of Smith in February 2007 and it is her final film...
s. The millions of peasants who have since quit the land remain stuck at the margins of urban society, and have been blamed for the rising crime and unemployment. Under pressure from their citizens, city governments impose discriminatory rules.
For example, the children of "Nong Min Gong - 农民工" (workers who come from counties) are not allowed to enter city schools with their parents, even now they have to live with their grandparents or uncles in order to go to their local hometown schools in counties. They are called home-staying children by Chinese governments. Chinese researchers reported that there are about 130 million home-staying children without parents year by year.
Analogies to apartheid
The hukou system has been described as "China's apartheid". The gradual relaxation of some of the more repressive aspects of the hukou system since the mid-1990s has further raised the need for this control system. This system represents a class system which is in direct conflict with the Communism system of China and undermines the authority of the CPC (Communist Party of China). However, as the hukou remains partially hereditary, the "substance of the social apartheid remains intact."Two areas differ from South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
's apartheid system: Firstly, under a system called xia fang, or "sending down", individuals or groups of urban workers were sometimes re-classified as rural workers and banished to the countryside (at lower wages and benefits), often as a sentence for "bourgeois imperialist crimes" during the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
; by contrast, white workers in South Africa were never sent to work in Bantustans. Second, the ideology driving China's apartheid system was Maoism
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
, not racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
. More significantly it is possible to move up from a rural to an urban hukou by obtaining a college degree and gaining employment with a corporation or the government.
Some China-based scholars claim that though the Hukou system is discriminatory, it is not significantly different than the passport system keeping people from developing countries from resettling in the West; other than the people being China born citizens.
Reform
Reforming the residency system has been a very controversial topic within the PRC. Although the system in operation was widely regarded within the PRC as unfair and inhumane, there were fears that liberalization would result in a massive influx to the cities which would stress already strained government services beyond the breaking point, and result in further economic loss to rural areas, rising social unrest and crime.On the other hand, there has been recognition for some time that hukou is an impediment to economic development. China's accession to the World Trade Organisation has forced it to embrace this reform to liberalise the movement of labour, speeding up its economic reform.
The system has undergone further relaxation since the mid 1990s. The first relaxation allowed rural residents to buy a temporary urban residency permit, meaning they could work legally; fees for these decreased gradually to a fairly affordable level. The discrimination against rural women has been alleviated from 1998, when hukou became inheritable through either the father’s or the mother’s line.
From 2001 onwards, hukou controls were weakened. In 2003, after the uproar surrounding the death of Sun Zhigang alarmed the authorities, the laws on Custody and repatriation were repealed; by 2004 the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture estimated that over 100 million people registered as "rural" were working in cities.
Chan and Buckingham's (2008) article, "Is China Abolishing its Hukou System," argues that previous reforms have not fundamentally changed the hukou system. Instead, reforms have only decentralized hukou control to local governments. The contemporary hukou system remains potent and continues to serve as one of the key institutions perpetuating China's rural-urban disparity.
The system is currently only partially enforced, and it has been argued that the system will have to be further relaxed in order to increase availability of skilled workers to industries.
Household registration in Taiwan
When TaiwanTaiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
was under Japanese rule
Taiwan under Japanese rule
Between 1895 and 1945, Taiwan was a dependency of the Empire of Japan. The expansion into Taiwan was a part of Imperial Japan's general policy of southward expansion during the late 19th century....
from 1895 to 1945, the Japanese government maintained the same system of household registration (koseki) as they did in other parts of the Empire of Japan
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
. This system of household registration, with minor changes, has been continued. Records concerning native Taiwanese are fairly complete. Records of mainlanders date back to the date they first applied for registration with the local household registration office, and are based on information provided by the applicant.
While all ROC nationals, including overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese are people of Chinese birth or descent who live outside the Greater China Area . People of partial Chinese ancestry living outside the Greater China Area may also consider themselves Overseas Chinese....
with no connection to Taiwan, can apply for a ROC passport, proper household registration is required for obtaining a ROC ID Card, which is often used as proof of citizenship, such as in national elections, and an ID number is needed to open bank accounts. Unlike in China, residency can be easily changed with the local authorities and household registration does not serve as a tool to limit a resident's movements within Taiwan.
Special administrative regions
Hukou is not employed in the special administrative regions of Hong KongHong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
and Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
, though identification cards are mandatory for residents there.
See also
- PropiskaPropiskaPropiska was both a residence permit and migration recording tool in the Russian Empire before 1917 and from 1930s in the Soviet Union. It was documented in local police registers and certified with a stamp in internal passports....
- Internal passportInternal passportAn internal passport is an identity document used in some countries to control the internal movement and residence of its people. Countries that currently have internal passports include Russia, Ukraine, China and North Korea...
- DanganDanganDang'an is a Chinese word meaning "record". Used in the political and administrative context, it means an archival system that records the "performance and attitudes" of citizens of mainland China. Together with the hukou, it has been an important part of the government's efforts to maintain...
- REAL ID ActREAL ID ActThe REAL ID Act of 2005, , was an Act of Congress that modified U.S. federal law pertaining to security, authentication, and issuance procedures standards for the state driver's licenses and identification cards, as well as various immigration issues pertaining to terrorism.The law set forth...
- Domicile (law)Domicile (law)In law, domicile is the status or attribution of being a permanent resident in a particular jurisdiction. A person can remain domiciled in a jurisdiction even after they have left it, if they have maintained sufficient links with that jurisdiction or have not displayed an intention to leave...
External links
- Visa Reciprocity and Country Documents Finder - Taiwan
- SOUTH KOREA: Male-Oriented Family Registry System to Change in 2008
- Wang Jianshuo: Hukou system in China
- Congressional-Executive Commission on China: Recent Chinese Hukou Reforms
- http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2011/05/04/getting-your-employees-a-hukou-an-unavoidable-hr-issue.html