Until I visited China in 2008, I’d never heard of the Hukou system. But it’s a massive deal in China, with hundreds of millions of migrant workers in the larger cities treated as second-class citizens, with little access to basic government services like schooling and health care. In terms of the sheer number of people it effects, it’s probably the single biggest human rights issue in that country.
So it’s a massive deal if the Hukou system is to be reformed; something that has been predicted for some time but hasn’t seemed to go anywhere. But Kam Wing Chan has a post at the East Asia Forum suggesting that there may be some gradual change in the wings:
Yes it’s true – hukou (household registration) reform is again back in vogue in China’s ‘post-crisis’ conversations. Premier Wen Jiabao has been talking about it and, unusually the catch phrase has also been placed in the first ‘Central Document’ of 2010. Following the lead of these two sources, hundreds of newspaper articles and commentaries have opined on it in the last few weeks. On March 1, 13 big-city newspapers from 11 provinces in China also made a rare joint appeal for accelerating reform of the hukou system in a co-signed editorial. In sum, the issue is firmly in the spotlight, and hopes have been raised for some real hukou reform.
I’m no expert, but it seems straightforward to me that substantial reform of the Hukou system will result in massive social expenditures for the Chinese government (which is obviously a good thing for those currently not receiving such basic services); funding this, without reducing the incomes of Chinese city elites, is going to require continued economic growth. It does tend to explain some of the Chinese reluctance to commit to any kind of emissions reduction that might restrict economic growth, even as their cities choke on their own pollution.
In the wake of 
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