The Chinese Hukou System - Research Paper Example

How China’s Geography reflects both Tremendous Diversity and a Remarkable Continuity across History and Regions. And How Thinking Like a Geographer Can Help in Better Understanding This Paradox. Introduction What is the Chinese Hukou System? The hukou recording system, which is also commonly referred to as a family register, is a system of mainly household registration that happens to be a legal requirement in China. The records made in the register include basic details on marriages, births, moves, divorces, death and moves affecting all the members of a certain specific given family (Chan 199). The hukou system became more pronounced in China shortly after the success of the communist led revolution in China. The PRC’s hukou system was initially first set up in the various cities within the country in 1951 and was later to be extended to the various rural areas in 1955. During the initial years of this system, it mainly served as a tool that was used by the communist government to monitor it’s the people and not as a control mechanism of any movements and population migrations. It should be noted that during the early years of the 1950’s, the country experienced a period of relatively free movement and people were basically allowed to move into and out of the cities without any restraints or inhibitions. The 1954 Chinese promulgated constitution was seen to even guarantee the citizenry of a basic right to migration and free residential choice (Chan 199). The unchecked migration of the population into cities escalated and became a serious burden on the central government leading to the implementation of new hukou legislation in 1958 by China’s National People’s Congress. Using the system, the Chinese government was successfully able to regulate its citizen’s mobility generally up to the end of the 1970’s. The governments considered the restriction of the labor mobility of its citizenry to be important if it was to be able to effectively implement the strategies it had laid in place that were prioritizing a general industrial growth in the country mainly by ensuring that it maintains the number of citizens whose economic activities are not agriculturally based to optimal low levels (Chan 199). History of the Hukou System in China The family registration system can be traced back to the early Xia Dynasty (c. 2100 BCE – 1600 BCE). In later centuries, the initial family registers were quickly refined to eventually become into a basic structural organization that was used in controlling entire clans and families for the purposes of conscription, taxation and social control (Chan 199). How the Hukou System Affected the Geographical Distribution, diversity and Continuity of the Chinese Citizenry The hukou system mainly classifies the country’s citizenry using two basic criteria, the first being by one’s socioeconomic eligibility (agricultural o non-agricultural) and the second was based on one’s residential location. The hukou system was seen to favor persons who were registered as residing in cities and urban centers over the economically agriculturally based persons residing on the state farms and villages. This dual classification of the hukou registration is basically important for the easier facilitation of basic rural to urban migration via the bureaucratic barriers for rural-urban migrants. Using the residence classification, the Chinese state government has been able to strategically confine people’s activities into specific localities. Using the non-agricultural/agricultural mode of classification, the state has been able to successfully separate the Chinese society into two main parts (Chan 200-203). To further strengthen this division, there has been a general imposition of huge barriers that are meant to deter persons with agricultural hukou from converting their hukou status. Conversion from one hukou status to another is not merely a matter of personal choice and the status is normally inherited from that of a person’s mother. Change of one’s hukou registration has to generally undergo through a bureaucratic process where one has to try and seek an approval from the Chinese state government. The government generally does not easily guarantee the approval of a status change in the event of a rural – urban migration. And a temporary residence certificate was actually required in the event that a rural hukou holder happened to have to stay in an urban location for three days or longer (Chan 200-203). The hukou system has been vital in the construction of an institutional foundation for use in regulating the country’s command economy, and essentially assisting in the eventual regulation and control of the country’s labor flow. It is often argued that without the hukou system, China would not have been able to achieve its command economy’s paramount goal of an eventual rapid industrialization within the shortest possible time. From time to time, small numbers of contract workers were brought into the cities to address the labor shortages that were being periodically experienced in the 1970’s. These temporary workers did not possess urban hukou and thus were denied any access to the urban social services. The practice was eventually practiced in the mid-1980 through to the 1990s during the boom in China’s export-processing industry. According to data from China’s Agriculture Census, this rural migrant labor soon reached a mass of 132 million in 2000 and the income earned by the workers became an important part of Chinese peasants’ incomes as a result of its accounting for approximately close to about 40 percent of this demographics’ average net income as at 2008 (Chan 200-203). The impact of this migration is clearly seen in Shenzhen which happens to be China’s largest migrant labor city with its population figures been projected to be at approximately 8 million with around 7 million of this not having Shenzhen’s hukou and being excluded from any government or state supported benefits and welfare (Pow 34). The hukou system has caused the country to experience relatively slow urbanization in comparison to industrialization. The policy system that was adopted by the government intentionally ignored any urbanization for the peasants an effectively denied them any benefits that might potentially accrue from the welfare and benefits of their areas being urbanized (Pow 35). As a result of the hukou system, the country has been noted to be having a rather wide socioeconomic cleavage as well as a rather unusually high level of rural-urban inequality. In 1965, the major divide for China’s population was essentially the country’s hukou systems rural-urban. Nearly all the country’s low-income stratum can be noted to have been inhabiting mainly the rural areas as well as being in possession of agricultural hukou. From the mid 1980s onwards, the restrictions on moving were eased and more people were now able to move from the rural to the urban regions with the intent of finding work in the cities. This new changes allowed for the social stratification to undergo a drastic change that placed the rural migrant labor workers at the very bottom of the urban pyramid. These migrant laborers were not categorized as part of the country’s urban industrial “proletariat.” This low ranked “rural” poor that was mainly comprised of peasant workers in the cities were essentially excluded from the urban social security system and welfare although their “urban” poor counterparts were included in the two systems (Chan 210-211). Economic Reforms and Urban Transformation in Shanghai China’s post welfare policies targeted at effecting various housing reforms have successfully been initiated by the country’s central government and have been key in facilitating the emergence of a mainly private housing market that happens to be generally centered on the development of the country’s commodity housing enclaves. The policies are seen to be mainly targeted at the nouveau riche and middle class demographics of Shanghai’s citizens. The development of Shanghai is largely believed to be somewhat directly related to the establishment of a new economic order by the country’s Chinese Communist Party shortly after the demise of Maoism that was experienced in the late 1970s (Pow 34). The post 1978 reformation polices that were initiated by Deng Xiaoping had several main goals which included; firstly, the general reconstruction of the Chinese economy towards the promotion of private and individual forms of ownership, which was viewed as being a shift from the more traditional collective form of ownership an overall control of all means of production, and secondly to create conditions that encouraged an increase in the proper allocation of any surplus in line with the market “efficiency” general criteria. This move was meant to increase the roles that the country’s markets played in the proper circulation of capital, goods, wage labor and services. The Overall larger aim of these reforms was to try and transform Capitalism into a form of socialism that had innate Chinese characteristics as well as the transformation of China into a modern nation-state (Pow 34). Cultural Continuity An exemplary example of the remarkable continuity that is present in China can be seen in the example of the heritage buildings found in the protected township of Jiangsu in China. The buildings in the township are seen to reflect the deep cultural heritage that is a part of China. It should be noted that in the early 1980s, there was the enactment of a policy that aimed at safeguarding political opening and economic reforms in China. Under the guidance of the policy, there have been several measures aimed at the development of tourism in China as well as the preservation of the country’s deep heritage. Under the policy, several areas have been keen to undertake various measures aimed at the overall preservation of urban environment as well as the architecture with keen emphasis being redirected towards the general development of their actual localities towards tourism (Maylis 22). The heritage policy that was adopted in the Tongli township of Jiangsu was an essential part of the urbanization process. The policy saw the uncontrolled expansion of the cities, there was the development of several small towns that were developed to serve as links between the countryside and the metropolitan areas. This was in accordance with the Chinese government’s principle of “leaving the land but not the countryside” (Maylis 22). Various heritage policies such as the one that was established by the Tongli authorities were essential in the instigation of tourist resources in the various localities. In Tongli for example, these policy was developed at a time when large sections of the city’s population happened to be unemployed largely as a consequence of the reforms that were being experienced in the public sector and the local authorities in Tongli were hoping to manage to offer the inhabitants of the township some form of hope via the development of tourism in the region (Maylis 22). China happens to be a country where the larger part of recent history is not only regarded as taboo, but also happens to be particularly tightly controlled over in the citizen’s memories. It can thus be seen that the eventual opening of several of the town’s heritage buildings to the general public has been instrumental in helping foster an entire discourse that mainly deals with both the future and the past of the locality and its inhabitants as well (Maylis 22). In efforts to ensure the continuity of the country’s heritage, the historical memory that has been constructed by the country’s local government can essentially be read in various different forms. This includes, reading the history from the various monographs offered to the locals and visitors, in the actual built heritage, in the way through which the various sites of interest as being present and in the local history museums (Maylis 25). The efforts at the preservation of the country’s heritage are argued to produce as an ideal that can is seen to be viewed through spectacles that happen to be rose colored as conflicts are generally ignored. A good case in point of this instance is that the restoration of the buildings has been designed to allow the buildings to generally be restored back to their pre-1949 state by carefully ensuring that all the traces of the intervening decades have been erased. The architectural restorations have been keen to restore the architecture to the Qing and Ming dynasties as the two dynasties boast of a host of famous persons that were able to leave their marks on those two times in Chinese history (Maylis 25). The restoration of the museums and local histories is seen to aim at hastening up the speed at which the Chinese people will forget the intervening Maoist decades that were experienced between the years ranging from 1949 through to 1978. Records from this period of history have been erased from all the official versions of the local memory (Maylis 25). China and the Internet In the year 2000, China was estimated to have 23 million internet users, a number which quickly rose to about 250 million users according to a census conducted in 2008. In the mid-2010 the number was estimated to be at about 400 million users. In efforts aimed at trying to control usage of the internet in the country, the government has adopted cyber-pessimism policies that have enabled it to be able to exercise greater control, bully, effect surveillance, cause a loss of privacy and repress the usage of the internet. Traditionally, China has always adopted censorship policies and it has extended these policies to the internet. Traditionally, China has always been closely associated with an over sixty-year history of efforts by the state to try and shape the country’s information. The genesis of these policies is traced back to the year 1942 when the then Chinese leader General Mao Zedong, criticized writers who were always focusing on the dark as opposed to focusing on the bright and good side (Weston and Jensen 174). Support for these measures is seen to show particularly strong diversity as approximately 84% of Chinese people living in urban areas are seen to support these moves while 16% oppose it and have resorted to using proxy servers and other measures designed to circumvent control of their internet connection (Weston and Jensen 184). How Thinking like a Geographer has Been of Help in Ensuring that I Better Understand this Paradox In helping ensure that I understand this paradox, thinking like a geographer has been of great help as it has enabled me to be able to carry out and in-depth analysis of the Chinese Hukou system and its effect on the dispersal and cultural growth of the country’s general population as movement between rural and urban centers played a major role in shaping the country’s continuity and general diversity. Thinking like a geographer has also been instrumental in helping plot how the country’s hukou system has affected the diversity and continuity of its socioeconomic, industrialization and economic sectors. The skill has also helped in evaluating the effect of the country’s urbanization program and the effect that it has had on the general migration patterns that has seen people taking advantage of the relaxed hukou system and start migrating from the geographically more rural areas to those regions of the country that are generally more urbanized (Chan 200). Thinking like a human geographer has helped in making me better understand how the cultural continuity of the country was effected and controlled by the government as was evidenced by the example of the heritage restoration efforts made in Jiangsu. It has also been of help in helping me better understand how the increasing numbers of Chinese internet users is perceived as a potential threat by the government and why the government perceives it to be of paramount importance to control the internet usage in the country. (Weston and Jensen 180) Works Cited: Chan K. Wing . The Chinese Hukou System at 50. (2009). (1-25) Bellocq Maylis. The Cultural Heritage Industry in the P C: What Memories Are Being Passed On?A Case Study of Tongli, A protected Township in Jiangsu. Province.(2006) (22-32) Pow, C.P.Urban reform, the new middle class and the emergence of gated communities in Shanghai. In Gated Communities in China: Class, Privilege and the Moral Politics of the Good Life. (London & New York: Routledge), (2009) pp. 34-52. Weston B. Timothy and Jensen M. Lionel. China in and beyond the headlines Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield. 2012. Read More