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原文：
Guest Editor’s Introduction
Zhangtingting
The Houhold Registration System (hukou) was a pivotal institution of political and social control in Maoist China. For more than twenty years, people under this system had no freedom to relocate. Rural-urban migration was particularly sanctioned. Though unintended, the incursion of economic reform in the late 1970s t in motion a chain of conquences that began the erosion of the hukou system. This issue of Chine Law and Government prents translations of he lected government regulations, directives, and circulars regarding the administration of the hukou system before and after the reform. PartI contains the official definitions of the hukou-related concepts as well as an official explanation of the registration procedures. Part II includes two regulations that prent a macro-picture of the framework of hukou registration before the reform: “Registration of the People’s Republic of Chin
a on Residence Registration” of 1958 and the “Ci rcular Concerning the Institutions of Residence Registration Transfer Procedures for Transfered Cadres and Workers.” Part III introduces new regulations created to cope with the increasing population mobility since the reform, including “Regulations on Residence Identity Cards of the People’s Republic of China,” “Regulations on Applications for Temporary Residence Cards,” “Regulations on Public Security Management over Rented and Lead Housing,” to name a few. The regulations shed light on the changes that have occurred in the hukou system and its future.
To usher in the main body of this issue, I shall briefly examine, in this introduction, the following questions: How did the hukou system come into being? How was it enforced during the Maoist era? What political, social, and economic forces brought about the changes in the hukou system? And what is the future of the
hukou system?
The Origin and Significance of the Houhold Registration
System
After 1949, China adopted a centralized command planning system and a Stalinist-type economic development strategy. Maximizing the industrial output was the major concern of the economic planners. Given its limited financial and economic resources, the Chine government elected to develop industry at the expen of agriculture. In order to induce unequal exchanges between industrial and agricultural ctors, the Chine government had to create, first and foremost, a political mechanism that not only artificially parated industry from agriculture, and the cities from the countryside, but also blocked the free flow of resources, including labor.
The Chine solution was the hukou system. On January 9, 1958, the standing committee of the First National People’s Congress pasd “Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Residence Registration.” The regulations formally initiated a full-blown nationwide hukou system. It required each family in urban areas to register at the public curity department and to hold a valid registration booklet. In the booklet, the name, birth date, occupation of each family member, residence of the amily, and family status (agricultural or nonagricultural) were recorded.1
China classified nearly 90 percent of the population living in the countryside as agricultural. This gment of the population was not allowed to change their hukou status or to migrate to urban areas. Anyone eking officially sanctioned rural-urban migration was required to complete a dual-ap
proval process: changing the place of regular hukou registration and converting hukou status from agricultural to nonagricultural (nongzhuanfei). To change the place of a hukou registration and to obtain a migration permit, an applicant was required to prent appropriate documents to public curity authorities. Converting a hukou tatus from agricultural to nonagricultural was subject to simultaneous “policy” (zhengce) and “quota” (zhibiao) controls. An applicant was required to satisfy the conditions t forth in the policy control criteria, while at the same time obtaining a space under the quota control.2
The process was usually extremely difficult.
Enforcing the Hukou System
From its inception, it was apparent that the hukou system could not function on its own. To assist the hukou system in controlling population mobility, collective farms were established throughout China. The farms were bestowed with government administrative functions. While the unit of the hukou registration was the houhold in cities and towns, it was the village in the countryside. Village collectives maintained a single register with the names of all houholds and individuals. Peasants were required to report to the collectives for daily work. If a peasant needed to travel, he was require
d to ek permission from his village to leave. If granted, he would receive a letter of introduction from the village, which would rve as an identification card during his trip.3 Collectivization of the farm ctor was completed in 1956. Coupled with the hukou system, this assured a high degree of state control over the rural populace.
Meanwhile, a formal urban rationing system was instituted in 1953. State-rationed products covered almost all foodstuffs and other consumer goods from cloth to bicycles. To purcha the state-owned products, people were required to prent ration coupons in addition to the required payment. The allocation of food rations and other consumer goods, as well as social rvices, were directly linked to houhold registration. Ration coupons were given out only to registered urban residents. Stateowned work units (danwei) were in charge of distributing ration coupons. In addition, a danwei also provided housing, children’s education,health care, transportation, movie theaters, and even restaurants to its employees. Few from the countryside were able to earn a living in urban centers without an official job assignment. Thanks to rationing and the danwei system, urban residents, on average, enjoyed a far better standard of living than rural residents.
Could peasants live in cities without urban registration before the economic reform? Although travel was occasionally restricted, it was not the main obstacle prohibiting spontaneous migration. The mai
n obstacle was the requirement of urban registration for employment and the supply of basic necessities. Without a local hukou,
a migrant could not qualify for a jo
b assignment from the government. State employment was the only means of gaining employment before the reforms, becau private employment did not exist. Without a work unit, it was impossible to obtain housing. Even if employment and housing were available, it was difficult to obtain such necessities as grain, meat, and vegetables becau the were rationed to urban residents. Even restaurants demanded ration coupons from their customers.4 In addition, policing organizations, such as the local curity bureau and neighborhood committees, often conducted unannounced hou visits on families suspected of housing illegal in-migrants. Hukou, rationing, and danwei formed an effective web in prohibiting unauthorized rural-urban migration in the Maoist era.
Changes and Developments in the Hukou System
Since the Reform
For more than twenty years, the hukou system effectively contained the rural population to where the
y were born, raid, and assigned. By the time of Mao’s death in 1976, the nation’s traumatic experience in the Cultural Revolution had damaged popular trust in the competence and political virtue of the Chine Communist Party (CCP). Serious economic and political cris were evident. According to the CCP, the only way to survive the cris was to take strong action on the economic front.5
A change came about in 1979 when the government began limited reforms in the agricultural ctor. Each family in the ctor was assigned a plot of collective land and signed contracts with the production team, in which they promid to provide a quantity of crops or rvices while retaining or lling the remainder on their own. The opening of rural free markets supported the reorganization of agricultural production. The reform at the time was merely intended to stimulate farmers’ production incentives. However, the opening of the produce free market created much rentment among urban dwellers toward the rationing system. Under the rationing system, delay in the delivery of goods was commonplace and supplies were often of low quality and limited variety. The rationing system became even more unpopular after reforms afforded people the availability of free markets and sufficient supplies of meat and nonstaple foods. The first sign of change appeared in the early 1980s, when
sufficient supplies of meat and nonstaple foods in free markets undermined the value of the official rationing coupons. In the mid-1980s, rationing tickets for cloth were officially stopped. Toward the late 1980s, tickets for meat, staple foods, and other consumer goods were gradually abolished.7 The abolition of the rationing system shook the roots of the danwei system. Urban people no longer depended on their work units for ration coupons. People felt free to move from one place to another as long as they could earn money to buy their subsistence needs on the market. Meanwhile, the emergence of the collective and private ctor provided the urban labor force greater freedom to choo and change jobs. Once the first step was taken toward liberalization, reform in one area quickly called for reform in another. In less than a decade, the rationing system was abolished. Further, since the reform, the work unit system has also been verely weakened.
The effectiveness of the hukou system in controlling migration depended primarily on the proper functioning of the above-mentioned supporting institutions. The weakening of the rationing and work unit system had eroded the previous multilayered control structure on which the hukou system relied for its function. After the economic reforms, the control of job openings and the daily distribution of necessities were no longer monopolized by the state. Many jobs are now available in the nonstate ctor, and almost all daily necessities are amply available on the market. State-subsidized welfare f
or urban people has been drastically reduced. Street committees are more interested in earning money than in performing social surveillance. Without the aid of the institutions,the hukou system can no longer restrict peasants to the countryside.
The 1980s and the 1990s witnesd waves of migration from the countryside to the cities. Surveys conducted in 1994 estimated the floating population in Beijing to be 3.3 million and that of Shanghai to be 3.31million. The numbers reprent 31 percent and 25 percent, respectively,of the two cities’ officially registered population in 1990.8 At the peak of the migration, there were approximately 80 million migrants floating in the entire country. The overall numbers of rural migrants working in China’s cities are large, both as a percentage of the labor force in
