China’s Hukou System Is Stubbornly Resistant to Reform
The Chinese authorities have announced a reform of the hukou system that ties citizens to a particular region and fosters inequality. But proclamations of the system’s death are premature, as powerful social groups have an interest in maintaining it.
A migrant worker holding a child walks at a platform of Fuzhou Railway Station in Fuzhou, Fujian Province of China. (Wang Dongming / China News Service / VCG via Getty Images)
Is China abolishing the hukou? Since the State Council of the People’s Republic of China announced a new guideline on public services on May 18, this question has led to an outpouring of commentary. For decades, analysts from a wide range of political orientations have called for ending the hukou. Has the moment arrived?
Most economists have argued that hukou introduces labor market imperfections and suppresses domestic consumption. Socialists and other progressives, on the other hand, have criticized the tiered citizenship regime and widely differentiated access to social services enshrined by the hukou’s mobility controls, seeing these restrictions as certain to reproduce stark inequalities across generations.
The past few weeks have seen a rising chorus of optimism that this relic of the command economy is finally falling.
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