Almost Democracy: The Death of Hukou?

If you read the title, you may be wondering: "What is hukou?" In China, there is a system where everyone is classified according to where they are supposed to live: In the countryside, or in the city. It's a form of segregation, except that instead of being divided along any kind of racial lines, it's built around where you were born.

This system's been around for around sixty years, and it's heavily entrenched in China's socialist legal code. If you're from the countryside, your benefits, medical care, and welfare all assume that you work as a farmer or similar. People who live in the city get corresponding city benefits.

The problem is that most of China's progress has been in the cities. The cities are where the economy is growing, it's where the prosperity is improving, it's where you can get an education, and it's where you can get ahead in the world. The countryside, by comparison, has stagnated. In a mirror of the west's urbanization, rural Chinese have migrated en masse to the city to find work and a better life.

The problem? Their documents do not entitle them to government-provided services in the city, and under communism, that's pretty much everything. These "migrant workers" live anywhere they can, get medical care however they can, and get an education wherever they can, if at all. In short, they are the city's second-class citizens, and they have the second-class wages to prove it. The Chinese government didn't intend for them to be in the city--their destiny was to become farmers. It's a long-standing problem, and something really ought to be done. And that's where it gets interesting.

Just recently, several newspapers in China called for the abolition of hukou. There are a few notable points here: The editorial was printed by more than a dozen newspapers, which sends a message of solidarity; if it were just one paper, it could be classified as a dissident voice, but it isn't. So this is interesting on a lot of levels -- firstly, it's the press criticizing government policy in a communist country. Secondly, there is a reasonable expectation that the government will listen -- the editorial is hardly a call to arms, but rather an appeal to authority to act. Thirdly, it suggests that China may be evolving mechanisms of policy correction, even in its nigh-total absence of democratic institutions.

In our own political theory, the free press is considered a vital corrective force, a check against governmental abuse. It's interesting to see the press function that way even in a society where the press is not particularly free, and where the general population can't vote to throw out officials they don't like.