MADISON BUTCHKO pens an exposé on the Chinese Hukou system and its use as a tool to maintain inequality.
“Every year I must return home to the countryside. I am tied to my home and the very street where I was born. But, it is not my choice to return home” (2023). During a phone call interview with my mainland China friend, Lee, I listened intently as she recounted her personal experiences with the hukou system. Coming from modest backgrounds, Lee Yuan’s parents worked as farmers in Luoyang, classified as an “agricultural hukou”. Witnessing her parents’ arduous labor in the fields, Lee relocated to Guangzhou after college, seeking enhanced economic opportunities. As an architect in the bustling urban center of Guangzhou, Lee enjoys elevated wages, a higher standard of living, and the potential for career advancement—opportunities unattainable in Luoyang. Despite the apparent advantages of urban life compared to her rural origins, Lee continues to face a myriad of social inequalities due to her rural hukou status, emphasizing that “I am legally obligated to return to my hometown (place of birth) for my registration and social welfare benefits. Guangzhou can never fully be my place if I am always tied to Luoyang” (2023). Lee expressed only one of the hukou system’s burdensome consequences highlighting inequalities that rural-urban migrants face.
Since 2010, Lee represents one of the 221.43 million Chinese who have migrated from rural communities to major cities. This mass migration continues to increase annually by about 10% (Deng and Law https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7769422). It turns out that China’s hukou system disadvantages the rural population, perpetuating a widening inequality gap due to social, economic, and educational disparities. The historical framework of the hukou system illustrates how it has inherently disadvantaged the rural population. Furthermore, the rural-urban educational divide in China will be explored, delving deeper into the social immobility experienced by rural hukou holders. By examining the origins of the hukou system and the reasoning for its implementation, this historical contextualization aims to answer the question: How has the structure of the hukou system disadvantaged the rural population?
Determined by a person’s official residence, the hukou system is China’s household registration system that provides population statistics, personal status, and other important state objectives (Chan and Zhang, 819). Originated during the 1950s, a period of significant societal change, one of the central state objectives was allocating and distributing resources to manage China’s rapidly growing population. To combat the uncontrolled influx of peasants migrating to the city (a “blind flow”), the Chinese government introduced and implemented the hukou system as a means of population control (Chan and Zhang 820). This new system classified people based on their “residential location and socio-economic eligibility” (Chan and Zhang 822) — all to maintain a balance between the agricultural and industrial sectors. The core of the hukou classification system consists of two key components: hukou suozaidi and hukou leibie. Firstly, an individual’s local hukou registration, hukou suozaidi, defines and determines their right to specific jobs, activities, and welfare benefits based on their residence. While hukou suozaidi is straightforward with its parameters, hukou leibie is far more nuanced in its cultural implications. Secondly, the hukou leibie refers to an individual’s “status” and type of hukou registration, categorized as either “agricultural” or “nonagricultural.”
The purpose of this divided system was to further facilitate the rural-urban migration by establishing the “nongzhuanfei”. Nongzhuanfei, the process of transferring hukou registration (hukou leibie) from rural to urban status, is crucial in understanding the barriers faced by rural migrants. However, due to stringent criteria and limited quotas, few individuals are granted this transfer, maintaining a significant disparity between hukou status and actual residency. To be eligible for nongzhuanfei, an individual must satisfy demanding and stringent parameters based on city and region. With only state-commissioned quotas varying slightly from year to year, these stringent qualifications have remained vastly changed since their implementation in the 1970s, according to “The Hukou System and Rural-Urban Migration.” Due to strict criteria and limited quotas, few obtain this transfer, widening the gap between hukou status and actual residency. Because individuals are rarely granted nongzhuanfei, the inflexibility of this state-regulated system severely limits one’s autonomy. According to a study conducted by The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20230525153524/https://www.refworld.org/docid/50a9f0f32.html ), 221 million Chinese citizens resided for at least six months outside of their city or town of official residence in 2010– underlining the glaring discontinuity between hukou and actual place of residence. These historical foundations of nongzhuanfei have created pervasive, systematic inequality due to the impossibility of alterations to address these underlying fundamental issues. These enduring limitations are not confined to the past; they persist in the present, manifesting as an ongoing struggle for rural hukou holders who are still denied the benefits and advantages their urban counterparts enjoy.
More specifically, the educational divide is one of the disparities between the rural and urban populations. Individuals with a rural hukou face educational disadvantages due to unequal allocation of resources, teacher shortages, fewer opportunities for schooling, and limited access due to economic limitations. Firstly, the distribution of resources between rural and urban areas is fundamentally unequal, resulting from the differences in financial investment and funding. “Educational inequality under China’s rural-urban divide” highlights the strong preference for urbanites regarding educational resources, driven by prioritization towards urban development and economic growth in cities versus the countryside. Although rural schools receive some funding, the vast majority of the financial burden falls on the county and township governments, which are much smaller and less financially endowed than larger urban-based governments. Additionally, “these lower governments lack bargaining power with superior governments” (Qiang and Qiang 595). The county and township governments do not have the power or state support to achieve the necessary funding, precipitating an inferior quality of compulsory education. These fundamental financial shortages contribute to the shortage of qualified teachers in rural areas. Many teachers need more qualifications to teach beyond a certain level due to the limited opportunities for professional development. Moreover, urban areas provide higher pay and a higher standard of living, which attracts qualified teachers while simultaneously exacerbating the current shortage of teachers in rural areas. The statistic, “In 2001, while 40.9% of primary school teachers in urban areas had finished at least specialized secondary education, only 20.3% of their rural colleagues had done so” (Qiang and Qiang 596), vividly illustrates the severe lack of sufficient funding and qualified teachers in rural areas.
With these early onset educational disadvantages, rural hukou students are inhibited from pursuing higher education. The agricultural nature of rural jobs leads to lower wages, limiting rural children’s ability to afford higher education, which is often located in urban areas. As a result, many rural students face financial barriers, including transportation, textbooks, and accommodation expenses, preventing them from pursuing university education. Biased against rural populations, the hukou system bears responsibility for the educational disparity that has furthered the class divide between developed and under-developed regions of the country.
In addition to educational disadvantages, the hukou system restrains the social mobility of rural residents because of employment discrimination. Social mobility is crucial as it offers individuals the opportunity to enhance their living circumstances and attain a better quality of life. However, rural residents’ lack of competitive skills creates even more job discrimination. Employment discrimination consequently leads to a lack of education opportunities, unequal wages, and negative stereotyping. In contrast to their urban counterparts, who benefited from superior education resources, rural migrants find it difficult to secure higher-paying jobs that require specific skill sets and educational backgrounds. Due to the prevailing educational disparity between rural and urban workers, many employers tend to assume that urban workers are better qualified, leaving rural workers at a disadvantage without equal opportunities in the job market. As rural migrants struggle to achieve professional requirements of higher-level jobs, they are often left with undesirable and menial jobs that urban residents find undesirable. This inherent inequality further compounds the struggles of rural migrants in the job market, making it difficult for them to bridge the gap created by the educational disparity and compete effectively with urban residents who already enjoy preferential treatment based on their educational advantages. Consequently, the lack of social mobility for rural migrants deprives them of equal opportunities to improve socioeconomic standing, locking them and future generations in cycles of disadvantage.
The research findings of “Identity-based Earning Discrimination among Chinese People” highlight how discrimination against agricultural hukou people exists even regardless of their profession (Siddique 4). Rural hukou holders receive lower wages due to a myriad of factors: limited access to quality education, resulting in skill and education gaps; fewer job opportunities in rural areas; urban-rural disparities in economic development; discrimination and bias based on hukou status; and urban employers assuming that rural hukou holders have less skill and favoring urban workers. Siddique’s research demonstrates significant wage differences between rural and urban workers across various job sectors, regardless of the chosen occupation. The difference in wages is highlighted by the following: “In the non-agriculture-related jobs, the earning difference is 2,924 yuan in wage…and in the agriculture-related jobs, the earning difference is approximately 2,218 yuan in wage” (Siddique 32). Across both types of professions, rural hukou workers consistently earn less. Furthermore, Siddique describes how the statistics exemplify institutional discrimination where people with an urban hukou “are consistently offered better wages at the expense of the agricultural hukou people’s wages” (34). The lower wages received by rural residents prevent them from improving their socioeconomic status and perpetuate the economic gap between rural and urban areas.
The hukou serves as a mechanism that shapes and determines the daily lives of individuals in China, permeating into various aspects of people’s livelihood, professional opportunities, education, mobility, and social status. Addressing these issues requires comprehensive hukou system reform. Educational reforms should focus on narrowing the gap between rural and urban schools by allocating more resources to rural areas, improving teacher training and qualifications, and expanding access to higher education for rural students. Employment reforms should also eliminate discrimination based on hukou status, provide equal job opportunities, and ensure fair wages for all workers, regardless of their rural or urban background. Furthermore, social integration is crucial in bridging the rural-urban divide. A more flexible and inclusive hukou system is needed to allow for greater mobility and choice for individuals. Reforms should simplify the process of changing hukou registration, reduce the stringent requirements, and provide equal access to social welfare benefits and public services for all residents, irrespective of their hukou status. By implementing these reforms, China can work towards a more equitable society for rural-urban migrants, including Lee, to have equal education, employment, and social integration opportunities. Such reforms would benefit not just the rural population but the country’s overall stability and development.
By acknowledging and advocating for those impacted by the hukou system, China can forge a more inclusive and collaborative society that values all its citizens’ rights, aspirations, and autonomy, regardless of the street they were born on. Before closing our call, I heard a new lightness in Lee’s voice as her words were now decorated with a light layer of hope. “Although I was immensely grateful to attend university in the city (Guangzhou), I know this is not common at all, and I am an outlier. I was considered lucky, but this should be the norm. But I hope that my experience of working in the city as a rural hukou holder will be something that everyone can do– a dream of reality and not just the imagination” (2023).
Written by Madison Butchko
Madison Butchko Madison Butchko Madison Butchko
Madison can be contacted at maddie.butchko@yale.edu. Madison is in the Class of 2025 at Yale College. She majors in Physics and East Asian Studies with a concentration on China. Being adopted from China is what ignited Madison’s interest in studying the Chinese culture and language.