Urban Citizenship in the 21st Century: China’s Hukou System and Its Intersectional Implications

 By Iain Burns

For my podcast on health and wellbeing in the city, I researched China’s hukou system of urban citizenship. With historical roots stretching back to Ancient China, in the 21st century hukou serves to connect residents of a city to social safety nets such as health insurance through a complex registry that favors a city’s native-born residents. On paper, the Chinese government promotes hukou because China’s larger cities face finite resources and could not accommodate an unchecked influx of rural-urban migrants. In practice, though, hukou guarantees that migrants looking for work in urban areas remain in a state of circulatory migration, existing in a sort of gray zone where they can live in a city without possessing the full benefits that a hukou-registered resident has. This results in devastating intersectional consequences: For example, non-hukou mothers cannot access affordable prenatal care and face complications during their pregnancy at a much higher rate than those with hukou. As another example, children of rural-urban migrants face obstructions when applying to attend high school or higher education which puts them at a great disadvantage compared to children with hukou registered parents. The hukou system continues to evolve, as cities such as Shanghai recently started granting hukou according to a points-based system wherein migrants with the highest scores are given precedence.

From a global perspective, China’s hukou system provides one of the earliest examples of a nation countering overpopulation with measures on a city level. The system appears utopian, futuristic, yet deeply unjust. I hope that this podcast demystifies one of the lesser-known aspects of modern Chinese cities which, surprisingly, shares much more in common with our own country’s migration policies than you might imagine. 

Resources:

Johnson, L. (2017). Bordering Shanghai: China's hukou system and processes of urban bordering. Geoforum, 80, 93-102.

Müller, A. (2016). Hukou and health insurance coverage for migrant workers. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 45(2), 53-82.

Tang, D., Gao, X., & Coyte, P. C. (2021). The relationship between internal migration and the likelihood of high-risk pregnancy: Hukou system and high-risk pregnancies in China. BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 21(1), 1-9.

Zhou, S., & Cheung, M. (2017). Hukou system effects on migrant children’s education in China: Learning from past disparities. International social work, 60(6), 1327-1342.