Reform Era Policies on Population Movement

Abstract

The impact of the economic reforms since 1978 has undermined the state’s ability to suppress rural-urban migration and has created pressure for the reform of the household registration system. The response of the state has been cautious. It has reversed Maoist policies designed to limit urbanisation and has recognised that urbanisation is a necessary and desirable development for China, but at the same time it tries to keep control of the type of urbanisation that occurs. It has allowed criticism of the household registration system and discussion of how it might be reformed. Experimental modifications of the system have been tried at local level, and, when these have been successful they have been introduced at national level. It has further introduced a national identity card. Finally, by allowing very large numbers of people to live in urban places despite their lack of a non-agricultural registration, it has reduced the impact that registration once had on an individual’s choices and chances.

Massive, disorderly movement of the population has been one of China’s most serious social problems since the 1980s. Due to the rapid development of the urban economy, peasant migration to urban areas now numbers in the hundreds of millions and has become a social trend. … The cities have limited capacity; they have their own weight to carry and they require the mobile population to have qualities that are compatible with the cities‘ own development. Therefore, reducing the ‘swelling‘ by limiting entry to the cities has once again become a hot issue in the cities this year.

(Zhang Wenyi, The Mobile Population should not have Free Reign of the Cities, 1995)