Until recently, few people in mainland China would dispute the
significance of the hukou (household registration) system in affecting
their lives - indeed, in determining their fates.2 At the macro level, the
centrality of this system has led some to argue that the industrialization
strategy and the hukou system were the crucial organic parts of the
Maoist model: the strategy could not have been implemented without the
system.3 A number of China scholars in the West, notably Christiansen,
Chan, Cheng and Selden, Solinger, and Mallee,4 have begun in recent
years to study this important subject in relation to population mobility
and its social and economic ramifications. Unlike population registration
systems in many other countries, the Chinese system was designed not
merely to provide population statistics and identify personal status, butalso directly to regulate population distribution and serve many other
important objectives desired by the state. In fact, the hukou system is one
of the major tools of social control employed by the state. Its functions
go far beyond simply controlling population mobility.
Largely based on a relatively comprehensive study of regulations and
policy documents pertaining to the hukou system and on recent interviews
with central officials in charge of designing hukou policies, this article
seeks to contribute to this body of literature by augmenting and updating
knowledge about the hukou system in relation to rural-urban migration.
Specifically, the article elucidates the complex workings and changes of
the hukou conversion process, especially the all-important nongzhuanfei
process (converting hukou status from agricultural to non-agricultural), by
studying a number of aspects of the system that have been only scantly
touched in the Western literature.5 This helps clarify many murky aspects
of the operation of this key system. On this basis, we would argue that
the hukou system was not designed mainly as a system to block ruralurban
migration, as commonly portrayed in the Western literature.
Instead, it was part of a larger economic and political system set up to
serve multiple state interests. The system alone is less effective in
controlling rural-urban migration than is portrayed by conventional wisdom.
This is true not only in the recent reform period but also in the
pre-reform period. Since the hukou system links people's accessibility to
state-provided benefits and opportunities, it significantly affects personal
life in many aspects. Its power in controlling people's lives has declined
in the reform era in the wake of enormous social and economic changes
and increase in rural-urban mobility, despite the central government's
continuing efforts to adjust the system to fit the new situation.
The first section of this article examines the role of the hukou system
in the complicated administration of rural-urban migration in mainland
China. The second section reviews the changes of hukou policies since
1978. This includes analysing the array of new hukou categories created
in the last two decades, which has not been systematically examined
elsewhere, and discussing the major consequences of the policy adjustments
with respect to the rise in rural-urban migration. The final section
examines some major issues and explores the prospect of future hukou
system reforms.