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 (1, 2), 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.

Comments

[wwwhitney]

Great post and great blog... the headlines I've seen on this story (as usual) don't truly reflect the situation.