"In China, city permits create social divide; Many inequities based on residence" by Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post | August 29, 2010
BEIJING — One of China’s oldest tools of population control, the hukou is essentially a household registration permit, akin to an internal passport. It contains all a household’s identifying information, such as parents’ names, births, deaths, marriages, divorces, moves, and colleges attended. Most important, it identifies the city, town, or village to which a person belongs.
You mean, like a U.S. drivers license?
The hukou dates back at least 2,000 years, when the Han dynasty used it as a way to collect taxes and determine who served in the army. Mao Zedong’s Communist regime revived it in 1958 to keep poor rural farmers from flooding into the cities. It remains a key tool for keeping track of people and monitoring those the government considers “troublemakers.’’
Critics say the hukou system perpetuates China’s growing urban-rural divide. Migrant workers flock to the coastal cities to labor in factories and take other manual jobs, sometimes living many years in places such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Because they lack an “urban hukou,’’ they are forever designated “temporary residents’’ — unentitled to subsidized public housing, public education beyond elementary school, public medical insurance, and government welfare payments.
China's internal illegal immigrants?
People who live in a city such as Beijing but do not have a local hukou must travel to their home towns to get a marriage license, apply for a passport, or take the national university entrance exam.
Parents and students say the last requirement is particularly onerous, especially if a student has to take the exam in a province that uses different textbooks.
Some economists here say the hukou system is outdated and unsuited to a modern economy that requires the free movement of labor. Others call it “China’s apartheid,’’ saying it has created a two-tiered system of haves and have-nots in all the major cities.
I'm sorry, readers; however, I am offended when that word is used to describe anyone but Israel.
White-collar professionals also find life more difficult if they happen to be born without the right hukou.
Don't we all?
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