the household registration system and its changes

In the first 35 years of communist history, migration from a small to a big city was hard except for: going to school, getting married, and job assignment. Going from the country to the city was virtually impossible. The work unit and the household registration system made enforcing this policy possible.

The household registration system was established in stages to coordinate with the implementation of Communist policies. In 1950, the Chinese Public Security Bureau started a provisional registration process for special groups of people, the beginning of the new household registration system. In July 1951, a provisional household registration system started with urban households. In 1953, on the basis of the first national sensus, much of the Chinese countryside set up the rural household registration system. However, in the first Communist Chinese constitution of 1954, it stipulated that citizens had the freedom of geographic movement and residence. In 1955, an official document from the State Council on establishing a long term household registration system stipulated that houhold registration would be practiced in all villages, towns, and cities in China, which unified the rural and urban household registration systems. The policy was more directed against rural migration into cities than the other way round, as from 1956-57, within two years the state published four documents (policy directives) on controlling rural migration into cities. The formal promulgation of household registration took place in 1958, along with the implementation of the "Household registration rules and regulations of the People's Republic of China." It officially divided rural and urban households into "rural" and "non-rural" households, in reality abandoning the freedom of geographic movement in the 1954 constitution. In 1975, the clause of free geographic movement was struck out of the constitution, which has not been reinstated.

In 1984, the State Council implemented a new policy "An announcement of rural population settling in small and medium sized towns" allowing rural houesholds to settle in towns (not large cities) while taking care of their own food supplies. It did not solve the problem of geographic mobility because the rationing system continued to exist until 1993, and rural population, without urban registration, could not collect the ration tickets to purchase their grains, cooking oil, eggs, and soybean products.

In 1985, a new policy was implemented by the Public Security Bureau "A provisional ruling on the management of population in the small and medium sized towns." It stipulated that every year, 2 out of 10,000 rural residents could change status to non-rural residents. The resident card was also implemented to accommodate a growing market economy and more mobile population.

In 1997, the State Council implemented a new policy "Opinions on the experiments in reforming household registration system in the small towns and improving rural household registration." It stipulated that rural migrants working in small cities, starting industrial and service businesses in small cities, becoming employed in government agencies, institutions, businesses and enterprises in a management or technical capacity, or those rural residents who bought housing or legally built housing in the small towns, were eligible to apply for permanent residency in the small towns for themselves and their direct relatives.

In July 1998, a new policy was implemented to complement the 1997 directive. "On settling some prominent issues in the current household management system," the State Council and the Public Security Bureau allowed those with legal and permanent housing, legal and stable jobs and income sources, who have been living in a city for a number of years according to the rules and regulations of the local government, should be allowed to have registration of that city, along with their children, spouse, parents and other direct relatives. This policy however does not apply to the largest cities in China such as Beijing and Shanghai where permanent residency is still hard to get.

In March 2001, the State Council approved relaxing restrictions over residency in small towns.

Looking at the history of the household registration system, one can see that the tightening of the system at first was to complement the socialist state regulated economy.  Just as work units organized people into fixed institutions, so household registration nailed people to fixed places of residency.  And just as the work unit was hierarchically governed (by rural communes, township, county, provincial, municipal, and central leadership), so the households would be classified as residents of rural, township, municipal, and centrally governed cities.  The problem with the system is that one is virtually born into a place of residency where one's household is registered, and, unless one is assigned a job elsewhere, free geographical movement was virtually impossible, especially from the lower to the higher levels of residency (e.g. rural to urban).  While this facilitated socialist regulation of the economy, it smacked of a feudal tradition when people were tied to a certain place without freedom of movement. 

Household registration was maintained through the local Public Security Bureaus (PSB).  Every household must register their newborns at the local PSB in order to receive the ration tickets for the new household member.  Almost all essential commodities were rationed under the Communist system: rice, wheat flour, corn flour, cooking oils, sesame/peanut butter, tofu and other soybean products, sugar, eggs, cloth.  Even if one bought cookies in a grocery store or ate a meal in a restaurant, one would have to pay, in addition to cash, the ration tickets for wheat flour or rice.  When buying clothes in the stores, one would have to pay with both cash and ration tickets for cloth.  All the ration tickets could only be collected from the local PSB where one's household registration file was located.  Therefore the household registration system was implemented on the basis of a socialist regulated economy.

With the beginning of market economy, the rationing system was gradually abolished. Prices of goods were allowed to "float" according to market demand and supply. There was much less incentive for people to stay where they were.

During the economic reform, the so-called "household responsibility system" in the countryside led to the disappearance of the People's Commune in much of China. With the partial revival of the free market, peasants can now sell that part of their produce above the quota collected by the state at the free market.  The growth of incentives led to greater productivity in the countryside, and a surplus of labor. Many of these extra hands flock to the cities in search of jobs, becoming migrant workers.  Unlike the American countryside, the Chinese countryside is distinctly different from the cities. Life is far less comfortable, where some rural regions still do not have electricity, and flush lavatories are not a standard necessity. Salaries are much higher in the cities than in the country, which are chief reasons for rural migrations to the cities.  Difference between inland and coastal regions is also tremendous. So some migration is from inland rural regions to coastal ones.

Today the household registration system still exists but, without the assistance of the rationing system, it is gradually becoming irrelevant to ordinary people's lives.  The legacy of the household registration system, however, is that migrants from other places still are treated differently.  They are easily discriminated against, are more likely to be interrogated by police when they fail to produce a local registration card (implemented after 1985 to quickly allow the police to identify if someone is from the local region or not, as the household registration book is always kept at home except when collecting ration tickets in the past).  Migrants have to pay for residency in the towns/cities where they do not originate from, pay double or triple for their children to go to school in their newly adopted towns/cities, and enjoy no medical benefits from local hospitals as they are not from the local area.