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China’s Hukou System: A Decade of Reforms

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Abstract

China’s rise as a leading global manufacturing power is closely linked to its vast internal migrant workforce and distinctive urbanization over the past four decades. This large pool of low-cost labor has significantly enhanced the competitiveness of Chinese manufactured goods in the international market. However, due to the lack of local household registration (hukou), these workers have been unable to access most urban social benefits, creating various challenges, including the separation of tens of millions of migrant families across different regions. In 2014, China launched its New-type Urbanization Plan, aiming to reform the hukou system by reducing the proportion of the “migrant” population by 2020 and increasing the enrollment of migrant children in urban schools. Drawing on 2020 Census data and recent policy documents, this presentation provides an initial evaluation of the key outcomes of the 2014 plan, discusses the ongoing challenges China faces in integrating its migrant population, and in its latest national and local efforts to further reform the hukou system.
 

Biography

Kam Wing Chan is Professor of Geography at University of Washington, USA.  His main research focuses on China’s cities, migration, and the household registration system. He is the author of Cities with Invisible Walls: Reinterpreting Urbanization in Post-1949 China (1994), Urbanization with Chinese CharacteristicsThe Hukou System and Migration (2019), and 《大国城民:城镇化及户籍改革》(Becoming Urban Citizens: Urbanization and China’s Hukou Reform) (2023). He has served as a Consultant for the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, United Nations, and McKinsey & Co. for various policy projects on China. He has also published many op-eds and commentaries online and in major media. More at: http://faculty.washington.edu/kwchan/

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