China editorials call for end to residency permit rules (Hukou System)

A BBC.co.uk piece of news on a call to end the Hukou system in China (we discussed this during the urbanization presentation). Call comes on the eve of annual meeting of Chinese legislators ...

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By Shirong Chen
BBC China editor

Living conditions are hard for migrants, this woman lives in a toilet

More than a dozen Chinese newspapers have published a joint editorial calling for the abolition of the household registration or "hukou".

This system limits rural migrants' access to services in China's more prosperous cities.

The appeal, which has attracted widespread support from internet-users, comes on the eve of the annual meeting of Chinese legislators later this week.

The hukou was introduced in the 1950s as a tool of central economic planning.

Discrimination

The editorial uses strong language, beginning by saying "long has China suffered from the ills of the hukou system!" and "all men were created free to move".

The hukou system registers every Chinese citizen according to their household origins as either town dwellers or country peasants.

Nowadays it is widely seen as a source of discrimination in terms of access to services like healthcare and education.

Since economic reforms began 30 years ago, many Chinese migrant workers have left the land to contribute to the country's rapid growth and industrialisation.

But they remain registered as rural dwellers and are not entitled to the same welfare as their city counterparts.

This has created social inequality.

The editorial says the system is unconstitutional and urges the people's deputies gathering in Beijing to overhaul it completely.

As well as being fairer, it says this would benefit China's economy as it would free up more labour and create more domestic demand.

The Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, admitted on Saturday that the bulk of the country's industrial workforce was now made up of migrant workers from the countryside.

However, it could take years to completely separate the hukou system from welfare provision, and eventually abolish it in the world's most populous country.

Speaking of growth (Foreign Policy)

A snapshot from Foreign Policy magazine of a "new" city in a more remote region of China. The situation described here doesn't apply everywhere -- there are real boomtowns with rapidly growing populations, even in the country's west. But the article does describe the model of government-driven investment and infrastructure building that are being pursued in many localities.

(P.S. We will be visiting Inner Mongolia on our trip.)
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China's High-Growth Ghost Towns
Visiting the eerily vacant epicenter of unsustainable progress, far out in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.

BY APRIL RABKIN | FEBRUARY 17, 2010
Foreign Policy (FP.com)

In the gritty Inner Mongolian wind, I stood at the pinnacle of the global economy, at least in terms of GDP growth: the main drag of one of the fastest growing cities in the fastest-growing region in all of China, the world's supposed new economic powerhouse.

Built in a breakneck five years, Kangbashi is a state-of-the-art city full of architectural marvels and sculpture gardens. There's just one thing missing: people. The city, built by the government and funded with coal money, its chief industries energy and carmaking, has been mostly vacant for as long as it has been complete, except for the massive municipal headquarters. It's a grand canyon of empty monoliths. In a paradox only possible in today's economic system, Kangbashi manages to be both a boom town and a ghost town at the same time.

Kangbashi represents a particularly destructive economic force at work in China today: an obsession with GDP that ignores all other metrics of progress or human capital. GDP as calculated in China -- or the rest of the world, for that matter -- doesn't make any distinction between quantity and quality, or between creative and destructive expenditures.

Due to the industrial pollution billowing out of the country's GDP-enhancing factories and mines, cancer is the leading cause of death in China. A recent government survey showed that 30 percent of children in Yunnan province suffer from lead poisoning. Perhaps the biggest and most destructive GDP boost came from construction of the Three Gorges Dam, for which 1.24 million people were evicted. Even some of the newly rich, however, shower in tainted brown tap water.

[China's Urbanization] McKinsey Report - China's Urban Billion

In preparation for the China Urbanization presentation, we invite you to have a look at a video summarizing a 2008 McKinsey report. The report mainly looks at future projections.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoOiPzg0Yzg

We will also be discussing historical patterns, main drivers and impacts of urbanization, and will show a case study of a city we will visit during the trip.