Freedom of Residence and Movement

The Urumqi municipal People's Congress Standing Committee in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) passed a new regulation on April 23, 2010, that regulates the management of rental housing, in a step one official connected to problems allegedly stemming from the city's large "floating population" of migrants, according to an April 26 Tianshan Net report. Among other stipulations, the regulation requires people renting out housing to register with their neighborhood or village committee within 15 days of signing, modifying, or canceling a rental contract. The committee, in turn, is to conduct an on-the-spot verification and submit the rental files to the local office in charge of rental managements. Where files are "standard" and "conform to conditions" (fuhe tiaojian), authorities will issue rental credentials, according to the regulation.

The Legal Daily reported on May 4, 2010, that Guangzhou's Public Security Bureau had directed district- and county-level party committees and governments to begin implementing an experiment, officially proposed last summer, to gradually transform its hukou registration system into one that will simply identify residents as holders of Guangzhou's "residential hukous"―an experiment intended to phase out the existing rural and non-rural distinctions. The changes are expected to take five years, and the Legal Daily explains that the process will "gradually reform the various kinds of policies of differentiation that accompanied the [old] hukou system."

The hukou (household registration) system imposes strict limits on Chinese citizens' ability to choose their permanent places of residence (see the Congressional-Executive Commission on China's topic paper on the hukou system). Given that social services are linked to hukou registrations, migrant workers who do not hold urban hukou registrations are more likely than than those who do to face discrimination when they attempt to access healthcare and education or find housing in China's cities―see previous CECC analysis on the barriers to education that migrants face.

Authorities in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), have implemented measures to curb citizen petitioning to higher levels over grievances connected to a demolition and resettlement project in the Old City section of Kashgar. According to a March 4 Xinjiang Daily report (via Xinhua), authorities in Kashgar have resolved residents' concerns about the project and have implemented a "zero-tolerance system" (lingkongzhi) to control petitions to higher level authorities. Authorities have included the rate at which officials "stop appeals and end complaints" (xisu bafang) and lower the rate of "serious letters and visits" (zhongxin zhongfang) in evaluations of "cadre effectiveness" (ganbu jixiao) and "peaceful construction" (ping'an jianshe).

China's hukou (household registration) system imposes strict limits on Chinese citizens' ability to choose their permanent places of residence (see the Congressional-Executive Commission on China's topic paper on the hukou system). Migrant workers and their children who do not hold urban hukou registrations face institutional discrimination in school admissions, since access to social services is linked to hukou registrations. Chinese Human Rights Defenders noted in a February 24 report that over ten thousand migrant students were unable to resume classes after the Chinese New Year's holiday in some districts within Beijing as dozens of schools faced forced demolitions.

Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) demolished over 4,700 homes in the Old City section of Kashgar city in 2009 as part of an ongoing project to demolish and "reconstruct" the nationally designated historic area, according to reports from Chinese media. As noted in a previous Congressional-Executive Commission on China analysis, XUAR authorities launched the five-year project in February 2009 with a stated aim of resettling at least 50,000 households into earthquake-resistant housing. The project has drawn opposition from Uyghur residents and other observers for requiring the resettlement of residents and for undermining heritage protection. Among recent Chinese media reports on the project, statistics on the total number of households resettled have varied, while information on the number of homes demolished appear consistent for the timeframes given in the different articles (cited below).

Writer and activist Li Jianhong suspects that Chinese authorities blocked her from re-entering China in mid-October because she had signed Charter 08, a document calling for political reform and greater protection of human rights in China, and because she wrote several articles in connection with the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen protests this year, according to an article published in the South China Morning Post (SCMP) (subscription required) on October 23.

Introduction