Opinion / You Nuo
No quick fix to residence registration
By You Nuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-04-16 06:44
More often than not, when a reform can be done through local efforts, it
becomes a glowing success. When a reform needs to wait for a uniform
plan, something implemented from top to bottom by a centralized
government agency, it takes almost forever to report progress.
Nothing better illustrates the top-down difficulty than the age-old
household registration system with its rigid separation of rural and
urban citizens.
Without changing their household registration cards, or hukou, rural
workers cannot fully settle down in a city and enjoy the benefits of
card-carrying residents no matter how long they have worked there.
But a consensus for change does not automatically generate change. The
key is to change the old household registration requirement with
standards that are feasible both for centralized supervision and
nationwide application.
Given the spontaneity of rural workers' movement patterns plus the
enormous size of the rural population still to come to cities, the cost
of implementing approaches to managing this urbanization is almost
prohibitive. What's involved is not just the technology to trace millions
of people's whereabouts but also the financial resources that should
follow them.
Small wonder that all that people can do about the old system right now
is talk.
In the last week of March, the Ministry of Public Security reportedly
called for a national conference to discuss the possibility of doing away
with the existing household registration practice.
After that, a survey published by China Youth Daily found that more than
90 percent of some 11,000 respondents agreed that China must revamp its
residential administration.
However, a couple of weeks later, hardly any concrete moves were
announced by any government agencies. Expert opinions surfaced cautioning
against going too fast in dismantling the existing system without
building a new one.
Ideally, the new system will include far more than just the red official
seals with which people can move from the countryside to the cities or
just new laws to ensure freedom of movement. If not matched by various
social programs, the only kind of freedom that those red official seals
can allow for is the freedom to create urban slums.
It is unrealistic to expect the public security administration, which
controls the red seals on citizens' internal movement papers, to lead the
reform of the household registration system. It is even more unrealistic
to blame it for being slow and conservative in bringing about real change.
If more rural townships had been able to provide useful public service,
to be less corrupt and more helpful to local industries and services,
there would not be so many people yearning to move to the cities.
If there had been more equality in the availability of urban education
and healthcare and if they covered all workers and their families, it
would be much easier for migrant laborers to just settle down where they
are without registering for city residence.
If the cities had been creative in planning projects to put in place both
jobs and public conveniences, they would be more open to migrant workers,
able to provide them with as many opportunities as for their existing
residents.
If the technological solution had been ready for the government to keep
updating the data on the 1.3 billion citizens, enabling them to get
social security benefits wherever they go, the household registration
system in place for half a century would naturally become useless.
Conditions are far from ripe, unfortunately, for quickly turning all
these ifs into realities.
E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 04/16/2007 page4)
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