November 9, 2007
Guest Analysis: Yunnan Province and the Hukou Registration System
[Editor's Note: I'm grateful to Carl Minzner, author of the China Law and Politics blog, for permitting the reposting of his analysis below. His post represents a scarce example in modern Chinese Studies of a laudable skepticism towards a claim, the import of which, if unquestioned, would have lead to an unfounded assumption regarding Chinese life, law and government.
The claim is that Yunnan Province will eliminate the hukou (户口) registration system, a development which, if true, would signal changes of significant magnitude in the administration of population movement, benefits distribution, registration for schooling and the like. What is the hukou system? Briefly,
China's hukou system has imposed strict limits on ordinary Chinese citizens changing their permanent place of residence since it was instituted in the 1950s.
Hukou registration, as a system of government control, has changed since that time, but it has not been eliminated. Fei-ling Wang's testimony to Congress in 2005 provides an excellent survey for those interest in reading on it. Carl's other posts on the subject are also worth reading for background: Is The Hukou System Really Disappearing? and Hukou Reforms Under Consideration.
Mr. Minzner is Associate Professor of Law, Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, and formerly Senior Counsel to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.]
Is Yunnan "Eliminating" the Hukou System?
Short answer – no. At least one website has reported that recent reforms undertaken by the provincial government of Yunnan will "eliminate" the household registration (hukou) system. This isn't the case.
The announced Yunnan reforms will eliminate the distinction between "agricultural" and "non-agricultural" hukou status, according to an October 25 Xinhua article. Similar reforms have been announced by a number of other provinces and municipalities. But they do not affect the requirement that migrants obtain local hukou in urban areas to receive public services and benefits on an equal basis with other urban residents.
The proposed Yunnan reforms will require migrants to urban areas to have a "fixed place of living" and a "stable source of income" in order to shift their hukou registration to an urban area. According to the Xinhua article, the Yunnan reforms define "fixed place of living" as property ownership of a home in an urban area, or possession of one allocated by one's work unit prior to 1995. How many rural migrants satisfy that condition?
The Yunnan reforms actually look almost identical in content to those announced by dozens of other provinces and municipalities. For more information, see these posts (Is The Hukou System Really Disappearing?, Hukou Reforms Under Consideration), the topic paper of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), and this list of similar reforms.
There is one interesting aspect of the Yunnan reforms. According to the Xinhua report, they define "stable source of income" as the ability to support oneself without resort to government minimum standard of living subsidies. Other local reforms I've seen define the term as professional employment or ownership of a business. The Yunnan reforms would seem to adopt a relatively less restrictive definition of this term. This may reflect new policy directions announced by Chinese central authorities over the summer.
Posted by Richard at 1:44 PM | Comments (0)April 13, 2007
Is What You Read About China Remotely Reliable?
In the 1980s, the Chinese government discredited Steven Mosher, a scholar of modern China and PhD candidate at Stanford University, and expelled him from the country. China's claims are immaterial -- it was clear that he was punished for documenting the horrors of the one-child policy.
China then threatened Stanford with excommunication: no funding, no exchanges. Stanford to its great and lasting shame did the unthinkable and expelled Mosher.
At the time, I hadn't yet decided whether to enter a PhD program in Chinese Studies. But I do remember some of my university instructors cautioning me to choose a topic wisely.
Mei Tzu-lin, whom I absolutely adored, was one of the few heroic figures I have ever met in academia. He asked me whether I intended to spend my scholarly life gallivanting through the Chinese countryside, adulterating my findings and conclusions out of fear of reprisal, or whether I was a scholar determined to search for the truth. I vaguely remember stuttering something, shocked by the profundity of his question.
In this essay, discovered on Howard French's fine blog, Carsten Holz provides an answer.
Posted by Richard at 4:27 PM | Comments (4)February 21, 2007
Uh, oh. A New Enemy.
No, I haven't read the book, and I intend to avoid doing so. The author's precis of his apocalyptic, decades-long, multi-fronted conflict theory with perceived enemy China is itself sufficiently off-putting.
We can chalk it up as just another iteration of the Golden Horde thesis, a prevalent idea in American life as early as the 1850s, when it became an underpinning of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 -- making Chinese immigration unlawful in the U.S. until, if you can believe it, 1965.
China may be many things to the U.S., but a devil-enemy responsible for all our ills she is not. That false conception is as far-flung from reality as the imaginative indications of China's complicity in nuclear terrorism in the American television series, Jericho. And it grinds my gears to see fear-mongering spread to a public that doesn't know much better than what our "experts" attempt to teach it.
Posted by Richard at 1:03 PM | Comments (0)May 4, 2006
Food and Beverage Franchising Study Available
Among the more useful of the quasi-marketing documents put out by the big firms is one entitled "Franchising Opportunities in China, Japan and Singapore," prepared by PWC for the APEC Secretariat. Please don't spend the $60 APEC wants you to dole out for this study since it is available free of charge here. [UPDATE: THIS STUDY IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE AT THIS LINK.]
Many readers have found their way to the Asia Business Intelligence website by way of keyword searches at Google and Baidu for "franchise Asia" and the like, so this study is something to peruse that is directly applicable to that need.
That said, the Chinese section of the study appears to incorporate an odd amalgam of sources varying in trustworthiness from Euromonitor to the Chinese statistics bureau. Not all is new information -- some 3 years old -- and you'll find some of the grammar strange in places (a translation?). Nonetheless, the study is a beginning, at least for those who are just beginning to think about operating food and beverage franchises in China.
Posted by Richard at 8:10 PM | Comments (8)March 31, 2005
China Environmental Business Newsletter
The US-China Environmental Business Newsletter, containing business opportunities, conference announcements and new, is available free of charge from the U.S. Commercial Service. A sample of its content from the March, 2005, issue:
1) New ADB Procurement Notice on Jilin Water Supply and Sewerage Development
Project Name Jilin Water Supply and Sewerage Development
Project No.: PRC 36507-01
Executing Agency: Jilin Provincial Government
Loan Amount: $ 100 million
The Project aims to enhance the urban environment and public health through better wastewater management, increased supply of high quality water and to improve...
Click here for the Environmental Technologies website and here for subscription information.
Posted by Richard at 1:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
