Opinion

The importance of China's second opening up

By Arvinder Singh (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-03 13:55

The most important thing to happen in China in recent decades but receive little attention is the country's "internal opening up". The rural-urban migration - swarming of cities by manual laborers, minggong (migrant workers), from the countryside - is the most that one hears about the internal movement of people. But this is just one part of the story.

People in one city, too, are moving to another for education, employment and business. They are moving from smaller, provincial towns and cities to other towns and cities. They are moving both within and outside their provinces. This movement of students, white-collar workers and businesspeople tends to be less evident but could be greater in magnitude. It therefore has a far greater implication than the migration into large cities, which draws almost all the attention in migration studies.

Given the huge size and population of China's provinces, and their diversity and heterogeneity, the number of people who move within or to neighboring provinces is huge. Cross-migration from provinces such as Heilongjiang to Guangdong or Hainan is becoming less uncommon, though.

China does not have a history of development-led, voluntary and free migration of people. Nor does it have a tradition of welcoming migrants. Hence, the internal opening up is creating a huge impact on provincial life and sentiments, inter-provincial relations, which at times is marked by competition and rivalry, and provincial identities. But perhaps its greatest impact is on social space (for living together), community and class relations, and the scope of social mobility.

Movement of people often comes with considerations of social mobility. Chinese society seems to have been shaken out of its traditional hierarchical slumber by a host of developments, led by economic growth, creation of more and new types of jobs and opportunities, more broad-based prosperity, better chances of moving up the social ladder, better lifestyles in better environs and, of course, the internal opening up. Here is a huge country being rediscovered by its own people.

Migrations have created serious inter-provincial disputes, but problems of sharing urban space and resenting "outsiders" is becoming common. Weideren, the outsider (not weiguoren, the foreigner) is the word to watch out for these days. Negative stereotypes about people from certain provinces, especially from where large numbers of people are known to migrate in search of work, are being reasserted. Not everyone in China wants hukou (household registration) to be abolished. Many want it to stay because it restricts rural people from settling down in urban areas. It seems hukou is becoming less and more important at the same time, depending on which side you see it from.

On the one hand, the government says it is trying to abolish hukou. On the other, officials say registration of the floating population is necessary. Despite the claims to the contrary, the hukou system has not been relaxed considerably. Instead, it has been applied selectively, with officials looking the other way if a place needs a certain category of people to migrate to certain areas. It is one thing to allow construction workers and restaurant waiters to migrate to cities and improving/protecting facilities/rights of migrant workers and another to lift restrictions on rural-urban migration or relaxing/abolishing hukou.

Some cities such as Shanghai and Chongqing may be experimenting with liberal policies toward migrant workers, but hukou is unlikely to be abolished anytime soon. At best it can be reformed. For example, restrictions on rural-urban migration could be relaxed partly or even substantially.

Hukou's functions are more than restricting rural-urban migration. It is needed when a Chinese wants to marry, buy a house or choose his work or place of work. It remains important for exercising social control and keeping social distance, too.

Yet hukou is only one part of the story of internal movement of people. Migration is not entirely a function of or determined by hukou. There is a tendency among people to either blame or credit hukou for everything related to internal migration. Some say hukou is discriminatory. But hukou is not just about discrimination, social control or restricting people's movement. It is central to civil and police administration in the vast and populous country called China. And that is why it is still there.

China's internal opening up seems to be irreversible. And the government, instead of trying to restrict the free flow of people, may adapt to the situation.

The author is a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India (www.csds.in).