Freedom of Residence and Movement

With the opening of the National People’s Congress session in Beijing, Chinese media have continued to focus on land management issues, suggesting that such issues will remain a priority in government work this year. For a media summary, see below.

China’s residence permit (hukou) system not only contravenes international human rights covenants, but also rights guaranteed by China's Constitution, according to an article published March 1 in the China Youth Daily (CYD). The broadly critical commentary called for both fundamental reform of the hukou system and true freedom of residence. The hukou system prevents Chinese citizens from freely choosing where they live, and also is a major cause of the growing divide between migrant communities and established residents in China’s cities. This social and economic divide has been discussed both in Chinese media reports and in the freedom of residence section of the Commission’s 2004 Annual Report.

Professor Huang He, a delegate to the National People's Congress from Shanxi province, recommends changes in labor laws and regulations, reports the People's Daily Web site. The reforms should reflect the decline in state-owned enterprises and the many changes in labor conditions that have occurred over the past ten years, Professor Huang said. He urges that new labor laws and regulations be written in response to labor conditions in the market economy that workers now face. For example, Professor Huang declares that the hukou system is broken, because no matter where workers might be registered, in practice they can go anywhere in China to find jobs. He also suggests drafting new regulations to ensure social security and other kinds of insurance to protect workers and new laws regarding employment contracts.

In an article published on February 16, the China Daily discusses population pressures in Guangdong province, which recently replaced Henan as the most populous province in the country. Guangdong reportedly has a population of 110 million, including 79 million permanent residents and 31 million migrants. Guangdong officials cited in the article complained that the migrant population, China’s largest, was creating problems for public security there. According to the province’s director of public security, Liang Guoju, more than 80 percent of the 510,000 criminal cases filed in Guangdong in 2004 involved migrants. Liang also noted that the provincial population is increasing much faster than the number of police, with only 12.9 police per 10,000 people, a smaller ratio than either Beijing or Shanghai.

In a recent editorial, the China Daily notes that urban construction requires between 166,000 and 200,000 hectares of land each year. As a result, between 2.5 and 3 million farmers lose their land to urbanization annually. The editorial lists reform of the land requisition, rural taxation, and rural financial systems as priorities in protecting farmers’ interests. It also calls for higher compensation and better social security for farmers who lose land to construction.

Chinese public security sources indicate that reform of the Chinese hukou (residence permit) system will not be on the National People's Congress's legislative calendar in 2005, according to an article in the Beijing News. Hukou status often determines an individual's ability to obtain key public services, and rural migrants lacking local hukou in urban areas often face significant discrimination. The hukou system lacks a clear legal basis, with a confusing assortment of overlapping national and local regulations governing both urban and rural residents. In recent years, many local governments have reformed regulations governing the treatment of non-local hukou holders (for information on recent reforms in Beijing, click here).

According to a January 26 report in the Beijing News, the Beijing local people’s congress (LPC) agenda for 2005 includes plans to abolish regulations limiting business and employment opportunities for migrants in Beijing. Sources in the Beijing LPC say that the proposed reforms would relax current requirements that migrants in Beijing obtain specific authorizations before they start a business or accept a job. The proposed reforms, however, would neither change the current requirement that migrants obtain temporary residence permits nor assure migrants equal access to public services such as education. As noted in the Freedom of Residence section of the Commission’s 2004 Annual Report, the major legal barrier facing rural migrants to Chinese cities is discrimination in access to public services.

The Legislative Inspection Committee of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Regional People’s Congress recently denied hearing of a bill to protect migrant workers' rights, stating that singling out migrant workers as a separate category of industrial workers would be "untimely." According to a report from Nanning, 11 legislators proposed the new bill, noting widespread abuse of migrant workers' rights, particularly the withholding of their earned wages. The Inspection Committee concluded that migrant workers are simply part of the broader industrial workforce and that designating them a separate category of workers would in fact be condescending and discriminatory. The report noted that in another 10 years, perhaps such new nomenclature might be warranted. The proposals in the bill were relayed to relevant departments as "recommendations" rather than as law.