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175-494: The district nicknamed "the enclave of Shanghai" was a major destination for the sent-down youth from the city. Part of the county was put under Shanghai to establish a municipal farm since 1950, and there are still several farms and two prisons administered by Shanghai at present. Zhang Jian established Ts'ao-yen-ch'ang Ta-feng Salt&Cultivation Limited Company ( Chinese : 草堰場大豐鹽墾股份有限公司 ; pinyin : Cǎoyànchǎng Dàfēng Yánkěn Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī ) in 1917, at Caoyan,

350-605: A 2010 study revealed that rural workers earned 40% less than urban workers, and only 16% receive employment benefits. Migrant workers' labor rights are also frequently violated – they work excessively long hours in poor conditions, and face physical and psychological harassment. Migrant workers are also disproportionately affected by wage arrears, which occur when employers either fail to pay employees on time or in full. Although such incidences are technically illegal and punishable by seven years' jail time, wage arrears still occur, and labor contracts and pensions may be disregarded. In

525-492: A central resettlement leading small group ( zhongyang anzhi lingdao xiaozu 中央安置領導小組) to oversight the campaign. In a meeting held from June to July 1963, Zhou Enlai demanded that each province, city and autonomous region make a fifteen-year resettlement plan (1964–1979) for urban educated youths. A central resettlement leading small group's report on August 19, 1963, explained the reasoning behind Zhou's proposed time span of fifteen years: "children born within fourteen years after

700-519: A classification system aimed to fix everyone in place. While city residents/individuals with an urban or non-agricultural hukou were entitled to guaranteed food rations, housing, health care and education, rural or agricultural households were bound by strict control over physical mobility. They were also expected to be self-sufficient in the countryside. Therefore, the 1953 reform of primary education permanently shut down most rural educated youths' opportunities for physical and upward social mobility. In

875-405: A coastline of 112 km (70 mi) and a magnificent size of the wetland along its coastline, which is around near 800,000 hectares, sheltering enormous numbers of species of insects, fish, wild animals, and millions of migrating birds. Upon the completion of Sutong Bridge , the district will significantly reduce the driving time to two hours to Shanghai and the south of Jiangsu. Dafeng has

1050-529: A commentary commemorating the second anniversary since Mao first inspected the Red Guards. The commentary, “Firmly Embarking on the Path of Uniting Workers, Farmers, and Soldiers,” stated that one’s willingness to go to the countryside to unite the farmers and workers showed one’s loyalty to Chairman Mao’s revolution. At the same time, local governments had also been adopting more forceful measures to push students to go to

1225-502: A condition that encourages more migrant parents to bring their children along. In short, the majority of rural migrants thus are still largely overlooked due to their lack to urban hukou, which is often seen as starting point for gaining access to life well-being. The Floating Population Dynamic Monitoring Surveys, which have been conducted every year since 2010 by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, have reported that

1400-548: A county official in Huma in Heilongjiang wrote a report to the provincial government that the county did not have enough land and other materials to allocate and support the 6000 youth assigned to live there. The county needed additional financial subsidies to settle them. And when many sent-down youth arrived in the rural regions they were assigned to, they were appalled by the poverty and the poor living conditions in many villages. In

1575-644: A free ride only if they were on return journeys. In the following month, the party's central leadership demanded all revolutionary students and faculties to return home by December 20, 1966. By the end of 1966, nearly all educated youths from Shanghai, 70% of those from Nanjing, and 90% of those from Chengdu returned to cities from the countryside. Moreover, returned urban educated youths formed various local and cross-regional “rebel” organizations, protested about abuses of educated youths, and demanded local governments to reclaim their urban/non-agricultural hukou andwelfare and. "Rebel" organization leaders were well aware of

1750-582: A free ride to Beijing and living subsidies en route. Benefited from the location and their connections back in Beijing, Beijing and Tianjin (urban) educated youths that resettled at production teams at outskirts of major cities were among the first to be informed. As the news spread, more sent-down or urban educated youths followed. Some indeed responded to the party's central leadership's call and united ( chuanlian 串連) to "revolt" ( zaofan 造反) and "return to cities to make revolution" ( huicheng nao geming 回城鬧革命). In

1925-491: A large-scale political movement during the Cultural Revolution. In the early days of 1966, when the Cultural Revolution was launched, student Red Guards attacked China's educational system. On June 6, dozens of seniors from The Beijing No.1 Girls’ Middle School proposed to abolish the college entrance exams. They denounced the “old educational system,” which they regarded as “encouraging bourgeois ideology” and “helping

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2100-466: A living by picking up trash in the city than stay in the countryside!" Some rural educated youths then turned to working opportunities in cities. However, the PRC's gradual nationalization of the state's private sector and the reform of handicraft industry in cities (and the reform of agriculture, knowncollectively as the "Three Socialist Reforms" (1953–1956) or sanda shehui zhuyi gaizao 三大社會主義改造), as well as

2275-418: A local, non-agricultural hukou, migrant children have limited access to public social infrastructure. For example, urban students' educational opportunities are far superior to that of their migrant student counterparts. The central government reformed the education system in 1986 and then again in 1993, yielding greater autonomy to local governments in the regulation of their education system. Limited space and

2450-469: A lower quality of education. School facilities are often in poor condition, and many teachers are unqualified. In subsequent years, the central government has enacted a number of reforms, with limited impact. In 2001, it asserted that public schools should be the primary form of education for the nation's children, but did not specify how it would financially support schools in enrolling more migrant children, resulting in little change. Similarly, in 2003,

2625-491: A number of challenges in their pursuit of financial security. Urban residents received priority over migrants when it came to employment opportunities, and when migrant workers did find jobs, they tended to be positions with little potential for growth. While urban workers were supported by employment benefits and laws that favored them over their employers in case of disputes, rural hukou holders were not privy to such substantial protections. And because city officials' performance

2800-408: A precondition to change from rural hukou to urban hukou, many rural migrants indeed are unable to gain that access, as many are "unskilled" (because many skills, such as farming, are not categorized as professional skills) and poor. However, in some large cities, even if a rural migrant does carry certain professional skills, it is not a guarantee that one will be granted with urban hukou. This situation

2975-400: A reception for the students, who were named “our city’s little soldiers” by Jiefang Daily , on the morning of their departure. The Shanghai government applauded the students’ choice and told them to continue learning from Mao's works, and to study from the peasants and participate in class struggle. However, the number of students, who volunteered to go to the countryside was far smaller than

3150-568: A sense of stability. In the period following the fall of the Qing dynasty, China was ruled by various actors, each of which employed some system of household or personal identification. During the Japanese occupation, the Japanese employed a system used to identify those under their rule and to fund their war effort. Similarly, the Kuomintang utilized the system to monitor the activities of their opponents,

3325-477: A significant number of migrant workers are in fact not interested in converting their hukou status. While hukou policy reform has been gradual over the years, barriers to conversion have been lowered. However, many rural residents are hesitant to give up their agricultural hukou status. As rural hukou holders, they have property rights not afforded to their urban counterparts, which allow them to use land both for agricultural production and for personal use. And with

3500-533: A small minority had matriculated to the post-secondary or university level. In the years immediately following the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) , the Chinese Communist Party ’s (CCP) central leadership largely promoted primary education. From 1949 to 1952, the number of elementary schools increased by 50% and student enrollment had more than doubled, from 23,490,000 to 51,100,000. Although

3675-436: A soldier was considered to be honorable and have a better political future or zhengzhi qiantu . However, the PRC sent 870,000 out of 1,290,000 (67%) of all urban educated youths to be resettled from 1962 to 1966 to production teams out of financial concerns. Notably while seldomly discussed, there were over 8.7 million rural educated youths returned to the countryside in the same period. On May 16, 1966, an expanded session of

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3850-430: A study conducted at the end of the 1990s, 46% of migrant workers were missing three or more months of pay, and some workers had not been paid in a decade. Fortunately, over the past couple of decades, the prevalence of wage arrears have decreased, and in a study conducted from 2006 to 2009, it was found that 8% of migrant workers had experienced wage arrears. Following Mao's death in 1976 came economic reforms that caused

4025-521: A surge in demand in the labor market. Rural residents rushed to fill this void, but without the support of hukou status-based government social programs, many of them were forced to leave their families behind. Economic growth throughout the years has maintained a high demand for labor in the cities that continues to be filled by migrant workers, and, in 2000, the Fifth National Population Census revealed that 22.9 million children between

4200-434: A tiny room with many others. It hence is worth asking the question whether or not the hukou system has been sufficiently improved to a more people-centered system. In fact, many large cities are still strict about granting rural migrants with urban hukou and about using the hukou system to determine whether or not one should be granted with welfare entitlements. Even if the "National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014-2020)" and

4375-502: A town of Dafeng nowadays. The northern Dongtai under the CPC became a separate county in 1942. The county was designated Taipei ( 臺北 ) for its location (north [pei] of Dongtai [abbreviated to tai]). Considering its namesake in Taiwan , it was renamed Dafeng , derived from Zhang's company in 1951. Dafeng borders four counties including Dongtai , Sheyang , Yancheng and Xinghua . The county has

4550-501: A warm and wet subtropical climate and is influenced by the East Asian monsoon . It has distinct seasons and an abundant sunshine. The average annual temperature is close to 15 °C and the normal precipitation is over 1,000 mm yearly. At present, Dafeng District has 11 towns and 2 subdistricts. 2 Subdistricts Sent-down youth The sent-down , rusticated , or "educated" youth ( Chinese : 知識青年 ), also known as

4725-617: A working team to let the family’s two daughters be sent to the same place in Jiangxi Province. Some families in Shanghai tried to have their children sent to nearby provinces in Zhejiang and Jiangsu. And still, some disapproved the down-to-the-countryside mandate. In one factory in Shanghai, 100 study sessions were held in 1969 to persuade the workers to send their children to the countryside. Some Shanghai residents even damaged homes of members of

4900-401: Is a system of household registration used in mainland China . The system itself is more properly called " huji " ( Chinese : 户籍 ; lit. 'household origin'), and has origins in ancient China ; hukou is the registration of an individual in the system ( kou literally means "mouth", which originates from the practise of regarding family members as "mouths to feed", similar to

5075-529: Is in this context that ten students from the Beijing No.25 High School left Beijing for Inner Mongolia in 1967. On October 9, 1967, right before the ten students’ departure, thousands of people gathered at the Tian’anmen square to send them off. In front of a giant portrait of Chairman Mao, the students pledged their allegiance: “For the great cause to redden the world with Mao Zedong thoughts, we are willing to climb

5250-519: Is issued per family, and usually includes the births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and moves, of all members in the family. The system descends in part from ancient Chinese household registration systems. The hukou system also influenced similar systems within the public administration structures of neighboring East Asian countries, such as Japan ( koseki ) and Korea ( hoju ), as well as the Southeast Asian country Vietnam ( hộ khẩu ). In South Korea,

5425-490: Is often harder to get into college. Since 2012, some regions began to relax the requirements and allow some children of migrants to take College Entrance Exam in the regions. By 2016, Guangdong's policies are the most relaxed. A child of migrants can take Entrance Exam in Guangdong if he or she has attended 3 years of high school in the province, and if the parent(s) have legal jobs and have paid for 3 years of social insurance in

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5600-420: Is particularly revealed from many highly educated migrants. Despite their education background, many would not be granted with urban hukou unless they become a homeowner. However, given the high price of real estate in many large cities (such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou), many are unable to do so even if some cities do offer housing subsidies to migrants. Given their lack of urban hukou, many not only face

5775-626: The zhiqing , were the young people who—beginning in the 1950s until the end of the Cultural Revolution , willingly or under coercion—left the urban districts of the People's Republic of China to live and work in rural areas as part of the " Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement ". The vast majority of young people who went to the rural communities had received elementary to high school education, and only

5950-402: The "stay-at-home" or "left-behind" children . There are around 130 million such left-behind children, living without their parents, as reported by Chinese researchers. As rural workers provide their workforce in the urban areas, which also profit from the respective taxes, while their families use public services in the rural areas (e.g. schools for their children, health care for the elderly),

6125-607: The Examination of Hukou in Wenxian Tongkao published in 1317, there was a minister for population management during the Zhou dynasty named Simin (Chinese: 司民 ), who was responsible for recording births, deaths, emigrations and immigrations. The Rites of Zhou notes that three copies of documents were kept in different places. The administrative divisions in Zhou dynasty were a function of

6300-572: The hoju system was abolished in January 2008. While unrelated in origin, propiska in the Soviet Union and resident registration in Russia had a similar purpose and served as a model for modern China's hukou system. Due to its connection to social programs provided by the government, which assigns benefits based on agricultural and non-agricultural residency status (often referred to as rural and urban),

6475-517: The huji system and an individual's hukou . The hukou system has origins in China that date back to ancient times, but the system in its current form came into being with the 1958 People's Republic of China Hukou Registration Regulation . Until very recently, each citizen was classified in an agricultural or non-agricultural hukou (commonly referred to as rural or urban) and further categorized by location of origin. This two-fold organization structure

6650-478: The hukou system upon migrant labourers became onerous in the 1980s after hundreds of millions were ejected from state corporations and cooperatives. Since the 1980s, an estimated 200 million Chinese live outside their officially registered areas and under far less eligibility for education and government services, living therefore in a condition similar in many ways to that of illegal immigrants . The millions of peasants who have left their land remain trapped at

6825-671: The " Three Difference " or sanda chabie 三大差別) persisted and had impacts on peoples' decisions or reactions to the PRC policies. As a result, one of the primary propaganda slogans that the CCP's central leadership adopted to promote the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement during the Cultural Revolution was to eliminate the "Three Differences." Similarly, another form of cha chang , resettling at Production and Construction Corps ( shengchan jianshe bingtuan 生產建設兵團) as soldiers in borderlands, became popular among urban educated youths because that being

7000-531: The " five black categories " ( hei wulei 黑五类), were subjected to potential bias and abuses. For instance, a production brigade in the Zengcheng county, Guangdong province prohibited all urban educated youths and "bad elements" ( huai fenzi 壞分子) of the "five black categories" from participating in the mass gatherings. Shanghai send-down youths that resettled in Anhui province were even expelled and repatriated to Shanghai by

7175-510: The "Opinions on Further Promoting the Reform of the Hukou System" implemented in the third reform period intend to create a more people-centered system, they claim that larger cities should have different hukou registration systems from the smaller cities and towns; and that the hukou regulation will continue to be stricter in larger cities. However, the very large cities (such as Beijing) are usually

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7350-545: The "Pilot Scheme for Reform of the Hukou System in Small Towns" and "Instructions on Improving the Management of Rural Hukou System", rural migrant workers could register as permanent residents with equal access to urban privileges in certain small towns. These policies were then made official in 2012 with the state document "Notice on Actively Yet Prudently Pushing Forward the Reform of Hukou System Management." Moreover, in 1999,

7525-470: The "Three Socialist Reforms," the PRC's reform of agriculture/agricultural collectivization campaign in the 1950s merged individual peasant households into agricultural producers' cooperatives ( nongcun hezuoshe 農村合作社, better known as the three-tiered, rural production unit: people's commune-production brigade-production team after 1958) for collective production and distribution in the countryside. All adult members would receive work points ( gongfen 工分) for

7700-447: The "great networking" an monthly allowance of 7 yuan and 45 jin grain coupons ( liang piao 糧票). One urban educated youth that resettled in the Bayan county of Heilongjiang province recalled that some " capitalist roaders " ( zou zi pai 走資派, i.e., local cadres) encouraged sent-down youths to return to cities and provided each of them 300 yuan to cover expenses en route. Most cadres at

7875-494: The 21st century BC. In its early forms, the household registration system was used primarily for the purposes of taxation and conscription, as well as regulating migration. Two early models of the hukou system were the xiangsui and baojia systems . The xiangsui system, established under the Western Zhou dynasty ( c. 11th–8th centuries BC) was used as a method of organizing and categorizing urban and rural land. The function of

8050-466: The Anhui Provincial Office of Sent-Down Youth reported that the local villagers “hated them, but they were afraid to say anything.” Rustication did not end the Cultural Revolution in the minds of many sent-down youth. Many continued to organize study groups on social issues. Some even organized underground cells in case the opportunity for rebellion appeared again, although these groups were

8225-500: The Book of Lord Shang , Shang Yang also described his policy restricting immigrations and emigrations. Xiao He , the first Chancellor of the Han dynasty , added the chapter of Hu (Chinese: 户律 , "Households Code") as one of the nine basic law codes of Han (Chinese: 九章律 ), and established the hukou system as the basis of tax revenue and conscription. The first formal codification of

8400-550: The CCP Politburo meeting approved Mao Zedong's agenda and political declaration of the Cultural Revolution, later known as the 16 May Notification . In August, Mao Zedong met with over a million Red Guards from across the country that gathered in and around Tiananmen Square. Envisioning a nationwide revolution, the party's central leadership announced in September that the state would provide all revolutionary students and faculties

8575-450: The CCP who instigated the return of educated youths to cities, as well as their protests. The party's central leadership demanded all formerly resettled educated youths to go back to the countryside and continue participating in agricultural production. Another editorial on 18 January stated that the return of formerly resettled educated youths was "capitalist roaders'" conspiracy to undermine the country's agricultural production and to expand

8750-534: The Chinese Communist Party, and the Chinese Communist Party in turn used a system called lianbao, which bundled families into groups of five to aid tracking and impede counterrevolutionaries. At the time of its founding in 1949, the People's Republic of China was a highly agricultural nation. About 89% of its citizens lived in rural areas – about 484 million resided in the countryside, versus about 58 million in

8925-618: The Chinese Virgin Lands Campaign. Compared to urban youths, the CCP's central leadership and local cadres that were responsible for organizing youth volunteer pioneer teams considered rural youths in general to be more experienced in agricultural production and had more physical strength. There was at least a similar, if not a much larger size of young peasants that involved in the state-organized mass migration in Maoist China. Another underrepresented subgroup of educated youths

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9100-459: The Chinese version of Komsomolsk in remote, mountainous regions and borderlands in 1955. A youth volunteer pioneer team usually consisted of dozens to hundreds of youths that included a small proportion of urban and rural educated youths and urban workers, and mostly young peasants from outskirts of cities and towns. Most of them were also CYLC members. As of 1956, about 210,000 youths participated in

9275-646: The Huangshan tea and tree plantation as a result of the local class struggle campaign. Some Shanghai send-down youths resettled at the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp reported abuses by local cadres. In some cases, these send-down youths not only had to complete heavy works in the harsh environment but received no salary from their labor. Abuses of female sent-down youths were even worse. Some Production and Construction Corp cadres claimed that "(marriages of female sent-down youths) were only open to members of

9450-484: The Liberation (1949-1963) would reach to the working-age in the next fifteen years...It was estimated that there would be around a million middle school graduates that could not go on to higher education every year...For this reason, the party's central leadership demand that each province, city and autonomous region make a fifteen-year plan (1964-1979) that is centered on the resettlement of urban educated youths that reached

9625-468: The PRC made sweeping cuts in elementary and middle school admissions in 1953. This policy immediately had a huge impact on elementary and middle school graduates or the educated youths, as there were over two million of them that could not go on to higher education in the same year. Rural educated youths were worst affected. In 1953, the CCP initiated the First Five-Year Plan (1953-1957) following

9800-681: The People's Republic of China Hukou Registration Regulation was signed into law. This divided the populace into nongmin (rural citizen), with an agricultural hukou, and shimin (urban citizen), with a non-agricultural hukou, and grouped all citizens by locality. The key difference, however, lay in the distinction between agricultural and non-agricultural hukou status. Because the central government prioritized industrialization, state welfare programs, which were tied to hukou status, heavily favored urban residents; holders of agricultural hukous were unable to access these benefits and were saddled with inferior welfare policies. Furthermore, transfer of hukou status

9975-474: The Production and Construction Corp" ( bingtuan guniang duinei bu duiwai 兵團姑娘對內不對外). In the face of harsh living and working conditions, as well as threats to personal safety, these Shanghai sent-down youths caught the opportunity of the "great networking" ( da chuanlian 大串連) and returned home. Last but not the least, there were also a considerable number of urban educated youths, especially those who arrived at

10150-539: The Soviet-style development of heavy industry in urban areas. Such a Stalinist model demanded the PRC to develop more efficient ways to extract resources from agriculture to subsidize industrialization. Therefore, the CCP's central leadership introduced centralized requisition for grain from villages and rationing in cities (better known as the "unified purchasing and selling of grain" system or tonggou tongxiao 統購統銷 ). The system mandated peasants to sell "surplus" grain to

10325-556: The State Council issued an additional announcement, “The Announcement on Reforming Higher Educational Institutions’ New Students Recruitment”. The State Council wrote that it decided to cancel college entrance exams in the announcement. Because of the student Red Guards’ attacks on schools and the central government's approval, students who graduated in 1966 from middle schools could not enter high schools, and those who graduated from high schools could not go to universities. Meanwhile, as

10500-714: The Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement in 1957 were consistent with the party's central leadership's design—to resolve urban unemployment and admissions problems and accelerate rural development concurrently. However, it turned out that the movement generated massive discontent and social unrest. Accordingly, the demoted Liu became the safe target for returned urban educated youths to vent their dissatisfactions. Returned urban educated youths and their parents gathered in cities that included Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan and Shanghai and protested about Liu Shaoqi and his "black talons and teeth's" ( hei zhaoya 黑爪牙) abuses. Some "rebel" organizations also organized members to go back to

10675-732: The Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement in Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Shandong provinces. In a series of talks, Liu admitted that the state was facing temporary unban unemployment and admissions problems and encouraged urban and rural educated youths that could not go on to higher education to participate in agricultural production and become the first generation educated "new peasants" ( xinshi nongmin 新式農民). Liu addressed most educated youths' biggest concern—the future—and promised that educated "new peasants" would have promising lives. According to Liu,educated "new peasants" could earn local peasants' trusts by learning (agricultural skills) from

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10850-483: The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp turned to support the "great networking" in late 1966, after some attempts to prevent urban educated youths from returning to cities by setting up checkpoints on main roads failed. The “great networking” soon went out of the party's central leadership's control. In November 1966, it was announced that after 21 November, revolutionary students and faculties would receive

11025-400: The ability to become an urban homeowner) or both. Some scholars hence also call some reform policies as ways of "selling" hukou. Meanwhile, many migrants have claimed that their lack of social networks (part of what is called " guan xi ")—which in some sense is also accumulated with wealth —also has made it harder for them to find a stable job, let alone a lucrative job. Hence, if wealth is

11200-463: The accumulation of excessive laborers during the First Five-Year Plan left a considerable unemployed population with urban societies. Moreover, the PRC's urgent and termless need for having as many peasants/food producers (and therefore more "surplus" grain to be extracted) and as less consumers (city residents) as possible, made rural educated youths' countryside-to-city movements unfavorable in

11375-1077: The ages of 0-14 were living without either one or both of their parents. In 2010, that number had gone up to 61 million, equal to 37.7% of rural children and 21.88% of all Chinese children. These children are usually cared for by their remaining parent and/or their grandparents, and although there is a 96% school enrolment rate among left-behind children, they are susceptible to a number of developmental challenges. Left-behind children are more likely to resist authority and experience problems interacting with their peers; they are more likely to exhibit unhealthy behaviors such as foregoing breakfast and smoking, and have an increased likelihood of developing mental health issues, including loneliness and depression. And although left-behind children may have greater academic opportunities due to their parents' expanded financial capacity, they are also often under greater pressure to perform academically and thus are more vulnerable to school-related stress. Children of rural workers who do migrate with their parents also face challenges. Without

11550-414: The agricultural sector. According to academic Kam Wing Chan, the hukou system effectively "forbid the peasantry to exit agriculture." The instability and high rates of movement that characterized the years following the establishment of the nation impeded the central government's plan for society and the economy. Although the hukou system in its current form was not officially brought into being until 1958,

11725-607: The amount of labor they offered to the cooperative (measured by working hours). At the end of each year, agricultural producers' cooperatives paid their members with some proportion of the harvest and cash from grain sell to the state, according to one's work points, age, and sex. The large-scale agricultural collectivization in the PRC's countryside in the 1950s created a high demand for educated individuals that (at least) had received basic trainings in mathematics to serve as collective accountants and work point recorders. In 1955, Mao Zedong praised 32 rural educated youths who went back to

11900-425: The appearance of slums outside of urban areas due to a massive influx of individuals searching for work has not been an issue, nor have poor health conditions due to high population density. And regardless of its other imperfections, the hukou system's ability to maintain stability has contributed to China's economic rise. The legacy of the Chinese hukou system may be traced back to the pre-dynastic era, as early as

12075-459: The baojia system, propagated by Lord Shang Yang of the 4th century BC, was to create a system of accountability within groups of citizens: if one person within the group violated the strict rules in place, everyone in the group suffered. This structure was later utilized and expanded upon during the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) for the purposes of taxation, population control, and conscription. According to

12250-704: The case of the Shanghai sent-down youth, the differences between the rural and frontier regions and Shanghai were even more shocking. The sent-down youth from Shanghai brought with them clothes, bedding, soap, bowls, food, and when they returned home for a visit each year, they brought back with them more goods, some of which were also wanted by local villagers. In some villages in Yunnan, the Shanghai sent-down youth traded goods they bought in Shanghai, such as clothes, soap, candies, with local villagers in exchange for local agricultural produces. Hukou Hukou ( Chinese : 户口 ; lit. 'household individual')

12425-399: The central and local governments pushed hard with propaganda campaigns and various strategies to relocate graduated students from the cities to the countryside, some city residents and rural village officials showed ambivalence towards the mandate. Many families in Shanghai tried to negotiate for their children to have the best arrangements. For instance, one father there persuaded the leader of

12600-510: The chaos in the Cultural Revolution caused the industrial and agricultural productions to plunge, jobs available to these students were minimal. The number of students, who graduated from middle or high schools but could not enter higher educational institutions reached 10 million in 1968. Those students, who graduated from middle or high schools in 1966, 1967, and 1968, were referred to as lao sanjie (“old three-classes”老三届). As few employment opportunities were available, they became surplus labor in

12775-425: The cities. Two major political events during the Cultural Revolution marked the lives of lao sanjie : the Red Guards movement and the down to the countryside movement. In the second of half of 1966, many student Red Guards, realizing that they could not go on to study at universities, became all the more passionate exploring new opportunities to “unite with the workers and farmers” (与工农相结合). The idea of uniting with

12950-418: The cities. For the rural villages, it also became mandatory for them to receive and allocate these students. With the publication of Mao’s directive, sending educated youth in the cities to the countryside had quickly swept through China. In 1969, more than 2.6 million students from cities were sent to the countryside, making the total number of sent-down youth from 1967 reach almost 4.7 million. Although both

13125-552: The city (where at least 8.2 million rural migrants lived). However some saw the campaign as intended to send millions of rural migrants back to their original rural areas. It has been brought into question whether the reforms mentioned above apply to the majority of rural-to-urban migrants. Specifically, many reform policies, especially those during the first and second periods, appear to require rural migrants to possess some sort of capital, either human capital (such as professional skills and titles) or property-related capital (such as

13300-406: The city. However, with efforts to increase industrialization and Soviet help (156 projects), more and more rural residents flocked to the cities in search of better economic opportunities: between 1957 and 1960, there was a 90.9% increase in the urban labor force. A major objective of the hukou system implemented by the central government was thus to control the stream of resources moving away from

13475-433: The command economy, helping the central government implement its plan for industrializing the nation. From the establishment of the People's Republic of China until Chairman Mao 's death in 1976, the central government tightened its control over migration, and by 1978, intranational movement was controlled entirely by the government. Because living "outside the system" was virtually impossible, nearly all movement of people

13650-445: The contrary, rural educated youths could only receive 50 yuan for their return journeys to the countryside. Urban educated youths to be resettled preferred state-owned farms or cha chang over collectively owned production teams or cha dui . Not only did those who resettled at state-owned farms have a much higher resettlement allowance, they also receive salary-based monthly payment from central and local financial allocations, which

13825-695: The conversion of hukou status had already been implemented. These required that applicants have paperwork that documented employment, acceptance to a university, or immediate family relations in the city to be eligible. In March of the same year, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Labor issued the Joint Directive to Control Blind Influx of Peasants into Cities, which proclaimed that henceforth, all employment of rural workers in city firms would be controlled entirely by local labor bureaus. On 9 January 1958,

14000-534: The countryside and frontiers. On April 21, 1968, the Beijing Municipal Revolutionary Committee made an announcement, requesting schools to strengthen political and ideological education to change the views of those who did not want to go to the countryside. The committee also set up several new teams to mobilize the students. Meanwhile, mass propaganda had also been launched to expedite the mobilization. In July, several newspapers published

14175-526: The countryside at all. This was essential to preventing organized opposition to Mao's policies. During China's transition from state socialism to market socialism (1978-2001), migrants, most of whom were women, worked in newly created export-processing zones in city suburbs under sub-standard working conditions. There were restrictions upon the mobility of migrant workers that forced them to live precarious lives in company dormitories or shanty towns where they were exposed to abusive treatment. The impact of

14350-420: The countryside only a short while ago, simply took advantage of the offer of a free ride to return to cities. Indeed, sent-down or urban educated youths showed more enthusiasm and capacity to return to cities through the "great networking" than their rural counterparts. On the one hand, they had families or other supporters in cities and were therefore more likely to have a secured livelihood after their returns. On

14525-408: The countryside to lead local protests about the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement.  For example, Shanghai educated youths' parents sent a delegation to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp to "set fire" ( dianhuo 點火, i.e., to organize protests). In the same period, there were also rural educated youths that swarmed into cities, demanding for official job allocations and

14700-497: The countryside to work for local agricultural producers' cooperatives. He commented, "all educated youths like them (those of rural origins) that could work in the countryside ought to be happy to do so. The countryside is a vast world where much can be accomplished." Mao's comment later became a famous slogan to promote the mass resettlement campaign during the Cultural Revolution , when tens of millions of educated youths, regardless of their household registration or residences, went to

14875-433: The countryside voluntarily or under coercion. Since the very beginning of the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement, those came from rural areas, although received much less public attentions as compared to their urban counterparts at the time and even in nowadays, have always been the majority of educated youths affected. Redirecting rural youths to go back to their place of origins relieved but never resolved

15050-417: The countryside, frontier regions, factories and mines, and “ jiceng (grassroots places, 基层).” The central government's endorsement and commentary precipitated local government offices to make greater efforts sending off school graduates. As most factories did not have new jobs available and many had their productions halted because of the Cultural Revolution, local governments mobilized graduates to relocate to

15225-408: The countryside, it was difficult to know how many went willingly. Like many Shanghai families who were not enthusiastic about sending their children to the countryside, some cadres in rural villages were also not excited about the arrival of the urban youth. Many village officials first learned about the news from radios and broadcasts. A senior provincial official from Anhui province, who was sent to

15400-400: The countryside. One of the reasons it was more difficult to mobilize working-class families was that they had a more privileged class background than the families of intellectuals or those placed into the bad class categories. Their employment at the state-owned factories also gave them more bargaining power because although the factories could pressure them, their jobs were mostly stable. It

15575-635: The countryside. In Beijing, factories did not receive any new school graduates, and government work teams were assigned to warn the students that they would face the consequences if they refused to go to the countryside. For the families deemed to have political issues, their children must also go to the countryside or frontier regions. Otherwise, the families would be treated as class enemies and be struggled against. On December 22, 1968, People's Daily published an article on its front page praising city residents in Huining County, Gansu province, resettling in

15750-467: The countryside. The editor’s note accompanying the article quoted a directive from Mao. “Chairman Mao has recently instructed us,” the editor’s note went, “that the educated youth must go to the countryside and to receive re-education from the poor, lower and middle peasants.” (see also: social structure of China ) This directive marked the watershed moment that going to the countryside became mandatory for students who graduated from middle or high schools in

15925-579: The danger to challenge the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement. Instead, returned sent-down youths tactfully attributed the movement to Liu Shaoqi , who had been labelled a "traitor" and also a "capitalist roader" and was removed from office, as a result of Mao Zedong's attack on him in Bombard the Headquarters-My Big-Character Poster on August 5, 1966. In 1957, the party's central leadership entrusted Liu Shaoqi to promote

16100-483: The deaths of more than 65 million Chinese people. The 100 million urban hukou residents, however, were fed by fixed food rations established by the central government, which declined to an average of 1500 calories per day at times but still allowed survival for almost all during the famine. An estimated 95% or higher of all deaths occurred among rural hukou holders. With the suppression of news internally, many city residents were not aware that mass deaths were occurring in

16275-498: The deprivation of many of China's rural workers. In recent years, steps have been taken to alleviate the inequalities promulgated by the hukou system, with the most recent major reforms announced in March and July 2014, which included a provision that eliminated the division between agricultural and non-agricultural hukou status. In its original legislation, the hukou system was justified as created to “...maintain social order, protect

16450-584: The desire to protect local interests in turn induced local governments to avoid enrolling migrant children in their public schools. Furthermore, because the central government subsidized public schools based on enrolment rates of children with local hukous, migrant children were required to pay higher fees if they wanted to attend. Consequentially, many migrant families elect instead to send their children to private schools that specifically cater to migrants. However, to lower enrolment and attendance fees, these institutions must cut spending in other areas, resulting in

16625-430: The difficulty of purchasing an apartment—let alone purchasing a house—but also the disadvantage of being a renter. Because of the lack of rent control in many large cities, even if one rents a room—or rarely, an apartment—one can face the possibility of being asked to leave. Many of those educated migrant youths hence are also called "yi zu", literally "a group of ants", as many do not have their own room and have to live in

16800-601: The distance to the state capital. The top division nearest the capital was named Dubi (Chinese: 都鄙 ), top division in more distant areas were named Xiang (Chinese: 鄉 ) and Sui (Chinese: 遂 ). Families were organized under the Baojia system. Guan Zhong , Prime Minister of the Qi state 7th century BC, imposed different taxation and conscription policies on different areas. In addition, Guan Zhong also banned immigration, emigration, and separation of families without permission. In

16975-407: The division between agricultural and non-agricultural hukou status. The 2014-2020 National New-Type Urbanization Plan sought to attribute an urban hukou to 100 million people by 2020. It relaxed restrictions on small cities (fewer than 500,000 people) and medium cities (more than 1 million people). It maintained strong hukou restrictions on cities of more than 5 million inhabitants. Under

17150-490: The effects of migration on left behind elderly are ambiguous: while parents of migrant children are often better off financially and are happy with their economic situation, they also tend to report lower life satisfaction than do elderly without migrant children. Like the children of migrant workers, parents are known to experience psychological issues such as depression and loneliness, and those who take care of their grandchildren may feel burdened by this responsibility. Over

17325-461: The end of each year). On average, urban educated youths that resettled at state-owned farms—agricultural farms ( nongchang 農場), tree plantations ( linchang 林場), or fish farms ( yuchang 漁場, known collectively as cha chang 插場)--received 883 yuan , 1081 yuan and 1383 yuan respectively in 1964. By comparison, the average resettlement allowance for those who resettled at collectively owned production teams ( shengchan dui 生產隊, known as cha dui 插隊)

17500-506: The event marked the beginning of the down to the countryside movement. The initial phase of the down to the countryside movement, marked by the departure of students from Beijing No.25 High School in October 1967, was voluntary. In Shanghai, in August 1968, forty-five students from the city became the first voluntary delegation who left for the countryside. The Shanghai municipal government arranged

17675-467: The eyes of PRC policymakers. Eventually, the CCP's central leadership institutionalized the two-tiered household registration or the hukou system in 1958. Initially designed as a surveillance tool for the police to monitor the population to prevent counterrevolutionary sabotage in the early 1950s, the post-1958 hukou system assigned every individual in China a rural/agricultural or an urban/non-agricultural registration according to one's residence. Such

17850-522: The face of both pressures from excessive educated youths that could not go on to higher education and mass unenrollment in cities, the CCP's central leadership saw redirecting rural educated youths to go back to their place of origins a reasonable measure. On December 3, 1953, the People's Daily first proposed the plan to organize educated youths to participate in agricultural production in outskirts of cities and towns, as well as rural areas. This editorial became

18025-551: The gathering of elementary and middle school graduates that could neither go on to higher education nor acquire working opportunities in cities. By 1955, Shanghai alone had over 300,000 unemployed educated youths. Inspired by the Soviet Virgin Lands Campaign , the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) organized several model youth volunteer pioneer teams ( qingnian zhiyuan kenhuangdui 青年志願墾荒隊) to establish

18200-721: The government called for lower fees for migrant children, but again failed to detail how it would help schools pay for this. And in 2006, the government created the New Compulsory Education Act which asserted equal rights to education and ceded responsibility for enrolling migrant children to provincial governments. However, this too failed to improve the lot of migrant children. Students with non-local hukou had to pay inflated admission fees of 3,000 – 5,000 yuan – out of an average annual household income of 10,000 yuan – and are required to take The National College Entrance Examination ( Gaokao ) at their hukou locality, where it

18375-463: The government for all aspects of daily life, the central government could force obedience from problematic individuals. The central government's efforts to contain migration has been a major factor in the rapid development of the Chinese economy . Their tight check on migration into urban areas has helped prevent the emergence of a number of problems faced by many other developing countries. For example,

18550-575: The graduated students was to send them to the countryside. On April 4, 1968, the central government endorsed a second announcement the Heilongjiang Provincial Revolutionary Committee published, which stressed that graduated students should primarily be assigned to go to the countryside. The central government and Mao also commented on the announcement, requesting local government offices to assign graduated students to suitable places based on “four directions,” which included

18725-484: The harshest place needs to be dispatched the youth around Chairman Mao. We are ready to go and are just waiting for your order". More students denounced the college entrance exams and called for their abolishment in the following days. The Chinese Communist Party's central leadership supported the students’ proposal. In June, China's State Council published an announcement which said to postpone “higher educational institutions’ work of recruiting new students”. On July 24,

18900-464: The hukou restrictions in towns and small cities, to gradually remove the restrictions middle-sized cities, to relax the restrictions in big cities—but to maintain the restrictions in the very large cities. As a result, according to an announcement of the Ministry of Public Security, by 2016, the state has already issued urban hukou to about 28.9 million rural migrants. Furthermore, in 2016, the local government of Beijing announced that they would abolish

19075-449: The hukou system arose at the end of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) with the 1911 Huji Law. Although movement was nominally free under this statute, registration of individuals with the government was required, and it was used by the government to pursue communist forces and as a basis for taxation for the funding of wars. The law also expanded upon the baojia system, and was intended to establish

19250-553: The hukou system implemented by the central government in 1958, while holders of the non-agricultural hukou status were given ration cards for everyday necessities, including food and textiles, rural residents were forced to produce everything themselves. Whereas the state provided housing in the city, individuals had to construct their own homes. The state invested in education , arranged employment, and provided retirement benefits for city residents, and provided none of these services for their rural citizens. These disparities have left

19425-425: The hukou system is sometimes likened to a form of caste system. It has been the source of much inequality over the decades since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, as urban residents received benefits that ranged from retirement pension to education to health care, while rural citizens were often left to fend for themselves. Since 1978, the central government has undertaken reforms of

19600-486: The hukou system was no exception. Urban areas have historically been where authoritarian regimes are most vulnerable: to combat this, the central government gave preferential treatment to city residents, hoping to prevent uprisings against the state, particularly in the early years when it was especially susceptible to rebellion. The structure of the hukou system also bolstered the power of the central government over its urban citizens: by making city residents dependent upon

19775-408: The hukou system, the rural population was structured to serve as support for urban industrialization, both in agricultural production and workers for state owned businesses . In reality, the hukou system served other motives as well. After establishing the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party enacted policies based on the notions of stability and rapid modernization, and

19950-424: The immediate elimination of the urban-rural gap. In January 1967, a Japanese newspaper reported that there was an ongoing development of a nationwide “rebel” headquarter. Several days later, on 11 January, the party's central leadership made the first official announcement on the return of educated youths since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. The announcement claimed that it was "capitalist roaders" within

20125-401: The latter. Trusted by the local population both for their personalities and abilities, Liu concluded that educated "new peasants" could become local cadres several years after their arrival at the countryside. Moreover, Liu claimed that the state would also need educated "new peasants" to promote rural development in the near future. It should be pointed out that Liu Shaoqi's interpretations of

20300-463: The margins of the urban society. They are often blamed for rising crime and unemployment and, under pressure from their citizens, the city governments have imposed discriminatory rules. For example, the children of farm workers (Chinese: 农民工 ; pinyin: nóngmín gōng ) are not allowed to enroll in the city schools, and even now must live with their grandparents or other relatives to attend school in their hometowns. They are commonly referred to as

20475-569: The mass exodus of rural residents from the countryside in search of work impacted the children of migrant workers, it has also affected the elderly left behind. With the institution of the one-child policy in the 1970s, the average age in China has undergone an upward shift: 82% of migrant workers were between the ages of 15–44 in 2000. This has called into question the traditional custom of filial piety, and while retired urban workers are supported by government retirement programs, rural workers must rely on themselves and their families. It appears that

20650-433: The meaning of "hometown" or laojia —regardless of educated youths' actual places of origin, the party's central leadership now demanded them to go to the countryside. Last but not the least, these official announcements further incited class struggle. As a result, the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement that remained largely a part of the PRC's economic development plan in the late 1950s and early 1960s, became

20825-1010: The meanwhile, many also chose to return to cities because that they had conflicts with local cadres and peasants. For example, some urban educated youths with "good" political/family background or zhengzhi beijing considered themselves more “revolutionary" than local cadres and therefore demanded the latter to resign during the Socialist Education Movement (1963–1965). When the Cultural Revolution began, local cadres launched counterattacks and forced those resettled urban educated youths to leave. Others suffered from local cadres and peasants' discriminations. Several female urban educated youths that resettled at production teams in Inner Mongolia reported in 1965 that they had been prohibited from getting in touch with local " poor and lower-middle class peasants " ( pin-xia-zhong nong 貧下中農) due to their "bad" family background. Even those did not belong to

21000-469: The minority. From 1962 to 1979, no fewer than 16 million youth were displaced (some sources set the minimum at 18 million). Although many were directed to distant provinces such as Inner Mongolia , the usual destinations for the sent-down youth were rural counties in neighboring areas. Many of the Red Guards from Shanghai travelled no further than the nearby islands of Chongming and Hengsha at

21175-436: The model of resettling border support youths in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the PRC provided each resettled educated youth a fixed allowance. Such an allowance was aimed to cover educated youths' resettlement expenses, including costs of transportation, home building, food, farming tools, and furniture, in the transitional period between their departure places and their first "paycheck" received after their arrivals (usually at

21350-421: The most desired option as it would provide a promising future, tens of millions of youths swarmed into or returned to cities. The succedent, unprecedentedly large-scale redundancy and decline in school admission generated an even more severe population issue in post-GLF PRC cities. As a result, between late 1962 and early 1963, the CCP officially institutionalized educated youth resettlement policy and established

21525-453: The mountains of sword and go down to the sea of fire. We have taken the first step in accordance with your great instruction, that the intellectuals should unite with the workers and farmers. We will continue walking on this revolutionary path, walking to its end and never turning back.” State media, including People’s Daily and Beijing Daily, reported the ten students’ departure from Beijing to Inner Mongolia extensively and approvingly. And

21700-580: The mouth of the Yangtze . In 1971, numerous problems with the movement began to come to light, at the same time as the Communist Party allocated jobs to the youth who were returning from the country. The majority of these re-urbanized youth had taken advantage of personal relations ( guanxi ) to leave the countryside. Those involved with the " Project 571 " coup denounced the entire movement as being disguised penal labor ( laogai ). In 1976, even Mao realized

21875-582: The municipal government of Qingdao, Shandong province, organized a farewell ceremony to send off the city's first batch of students to the countryside. Less than a month later, on January 4, 1968, the Shandong Provincial Revolutionary Committee held a meeting where it was requested that all educated youth in the cities go to the countryside. [5] In March, the Heilongjiang Provincial Revolutionary Committee published an announcement which explicitly stated that its priority in allocating

22050-420: The number of enrolled middle school students saw an increase of 140% in the same period, elementary school students outnumbered their middle school counterparts over twenty to one. In response to the severe disproportion between the numbers of elementary and middle school students, as well as the overheated development of primary education in the early 1950s (especially in rural areas), the Ministry of Education of

22225-450: The official distinction between urban hukou and non-urban hukou within Beijing, meaning that all residents living in Beijing would be identified as Beijing residents regardless of their original hukou status. Having said that, in November 2017, the government of Beijing implemented a 40-day "clean-up" campaign which was claimed as a way of getting rid of the unsafe structures and shantytowns in

22400-402: The ones that attract rural migrants the most, given their extensive job opportunities. In this case, although the state has actively implemented many reform policies, the hukou rural/urban division still functions and represents a division system of life chances. Some scholars hence have argued that the hukou reforms indeed have not fundamentally changed the hukou system but have only decentralized

22575-499: The origin of the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement ( shangshan xiaxiang yundong 上山下鄉運動). By late 1954, Liaoning, Jilin, Shaanxi, Qinghai, and Gansu provinces organized around 240,000 educated youths to participate in agricultural production, a great majority of which came from rural areas. Participation in agricultural production meant more than cultivating lands, growing crops and other related manual labors. As part of

22750-662: The other hand, urban educated youths lost their urban or non-agricultural hukou and welfare of city residents to resettlement. It was the time to reclaim their rights. Most local state-owned farms and Production and Construction Corps, as well as production teams rarely attempted to prevent urban educated youths from returning to cities. Instead, most local cadres supported these return journeys and provided supplies, allowance, or accommodations en route. For example, cadres in Guangxi province proposed to provide every revolutionary student or faculty, sent-down youth and cadre that participated in

22925-419: The overall improvement in rural social welfare relative to that in cities have caused many rural residents to hesitate in converting their hukou status. Hukou is not employed in the special administrative regions of China ( Hong Kong and Macau ) though identification cards are mandatory for residents there. Instead, both SARs grant right of abode to certain persons who are allowed to reside permanently in

23100-635: The past few decades since the economic reform in 1978, the state of the People's Republic of China has taken steps toward reforming the hukou system by implementing a variety of reform policies. 1979-1991 can be identified as the first reform period. Specifically, in October 1984, the state issued "A Document on the Issue of Peasants Settling Down in Cities", which required local governments to integrate rural migrants as part of their urban population and to enable rural migrants to register in their migrant cities. In 1985,

23275-477: The period before they get permanent resident status, though still a Chinese citizen , they cannot exercise citizen rights anywhere (like voting in elections, getting a passport) and are considered second-class citizens . The People's Republic of China (Mainland China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) each claim the territories under the other's control as part of their respective state. Thus, legally, each treats

23450-460: The phrase " per head " in English). A household registration record officially identifies a person as a permanent resident of an area and includes identifying information such as name, parents, spouse and date of birth. A hukou can also refer to a family register in many contexts since the household register ( simplified Chinese : 户口簿 ; traditional Chinese : 戶口簿 ; pinyin : hùkǒu bù )

23625-436: The powers of hukou to local governments; and it still remains active and continues to contribute to China's rural and urban disparity. Meanwhile, others have also argued that by concentrating on cities, the hukou reforms have failed to target the poorer regions, where social welfare such as education and medical care are often not offered to the residents. Still, others seem excited, remarking that some cities have been offering

23800-560: The province. The difficulties faced by migrant children cause many to drop out, and this is particularly common in the middle school years: in 2010, only 30% of migrant children were enrolled in secondary education. Migrant children also disproportionately deal with mental health issues – 36% versus 22% among their local hukou counterparts – and 70% experience academic anxiety. They frequently face stigmatization and discrimination based on differences in how they dress and speak, and have difficulty interacting with other students. Not only has

23975-515: The regions. When a person with household registration in mainland China is settling in Hong Kong or Macau by means of a One-way Permit , they must relinquish their household registration, therefore losing citizen rights in mainland China. However, they need to settle in the SARs for seven years to be eligible for permanent resident status (which is associated with citizen rights) in the SARs. Therefore, in

24150-542: The reprints of oil painting “Chairman Mao Going to Anyuan 毛主席去安源 ,” calling for the students to follow Mao’s revolution. In Shanghai, the municipal city government set up an office in June to supervise the mobilization. In the same month, the Shanghai Party Committee also organized a large-scale rally to persuade middle and high school graduates to go to the countryside. On August 18, 1968, People's Daily published

24325-477: The resettlement of border support youths. Such a resettlement plan—one that appropriated each resettled individual a government-stipulated, fixed allowance from the National Treasury—became the model during the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement. Throughout the 1950s, the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement remained largely intermittent and closely correlated with

24500-588: The restoration of capitalism”. These students also sent a public letter to Chairman Mao Zedong, petitioning him to end the college entrance exams. In the letter, they wrote: “High school graduates should go to the workers, peasants, and soldiers, to unite with the workers and farmers, and to grow in the wind and waves of the Three Revolutionary Movements……. This is a new road, a new road leading to communism. We must, and will certainly be able to, make our proletariat road. Dear Party, Beloved Chairman Mao,

24675-438: The rights and interests of citizens and to be of service to the establishment of socialism". The central government asserted that because rural areas had greater capacity to absorb and use excess labor, the majority of the population should be concentrated in these regions. Furthermore, free movement of people was considered dangerous, as it would lead to overpopulation of cities and could threaten agricultural production. Under

24850-865: The rural populace highly disadvantaged, and tragedies such as the famine of the Great Leap Forward primarily ravaged rural Chinese citizens. During the Great Chinese Famine from 1958 to 1962, having an urban versus a rural hukou could mean the difference between life and death. During this period, nearly all of the approximately 600 million rural hukou residents were collectivized into village communal farms, where their agricultural output -– after state taxes – would be their only source of food. With institutionalized exaggeration of output figures by local Communist leaders and massive declines in production, state taxes during those years confiscated nearly all food in many rural communes, leading to mass starvation and

25025-464: The same benefits as possessed by urban residents. However, with living outside the system now much more practical than it used to be, a number of migrant workers do not acquire the temporary residency permits – primarily because they do not have the resources or concrete employment offers to do so – and, as such, live in danger of being forced to return to the countryside. In 2014, the central government announced reform that among other things eliminated

25200-465: The second hukou reform period. There were various kinds of reform implemented by the state. Beginning in the late 1980s, one was to offer a "lan yin", or "blue stamp", hukou to those who possessed professional skills and/or ability to make some sort of investments (at least 100 million Renminbi yuan ) in specific cities (usually the big cities such as Shanghai ), allowing them to live in cities and enjoy urban welfare entitlements. This "blue stamp hukou"

25375-555: The self-funded return journeys of rural educated youths and the CYLC-organized youth volunteer pioneer teams that primarily depended on their members' personal or family funding and public donations, border support youths relied on central (transportation, clothes, meal allowance en route, medical aid, etc.) and local government funding for resettlement. In 1959 and 1960, the National Treasury appropriated over 200 million yuan on

25550-432: The severity of the rustication movement and decided to reexamine the issue. But in the meantime, over a million youth continued to be rusticated every year. Many students could not deal with the harsh life and died in the process of reeducation. Before the arrival of the urban youth, many local officials were concerned that the students from the cities would add extra burdens, especially financial ones, to them. For instance,

25725-463: The special zones and districts. This policy hence made it easier for rural migrants to gain access to different urban opportunities in the special zones and districts. However, in 2003, the state published the "Administrative Permit Laws", which sent rural migrants back to their original residency in rural areas. Under this policy, rural migrants' life chances were once again determined by their hukou status. The third reform period began in 2014, when

25900-518: The state also allowed more groups of people to gain urban hukou, including children whose parent(s) had urban hukou, and the elderly whose child(ren) had been granted urban hukou. The third kind was applied to the special economic zones and districts that were established particularly for economic growth (such as Shenzhen). Specifically, in 1992, the state allowed all people living in the special economic zones and districts to carry two hukous: Their original hukou and another hukou related to their job in

26075-531: The state also implemented a policy called "Interim Provisions on the Management of Transient Population in Cities", which allowed rural migrants to stay in their migrant cities even if they had neither changed their hukou status nor returned to their original rural residency. In the same year, the state also published a document called "The Regulations on Resident Identity Card", which enabled rural migrants to work in cities even if they did not carry an identity card of urban status. However, what followed these policies

26250-583: The state at a fixed low price while providing city residents with guaranteed rations, which widened existing gaps between urban and rural China. Because of the urban-rural gap, many educated youths considered going on to higher education (and thereafter acquiring an official job allocation in the city) as the primary, if not the only, way out of the countryside and peasantry. For instance, a rural youth wrote to his elder brother in 1955, "I failed (to go on to higher education)...I could not calm down, because it mattered to my youth, even to my life...I would rather make

26425-458: The state has been putting effort into achieving their goals. For instance, the state has granted many left-behind children the right to attend urban schools so that they can reunite with their rural migrant parents; it has also offered many rural migrants job training. Moreover, in July of the same year, the government also published "Opinions on Further Promoting the Reform of the Hukou System" to abolish

26600-734: The state published and implemented the National New-Type Urbanization Plan (2014-2020) in March to tackle various problems derived from China's fast urbanization process. For instance, the plan aims to shorten the 17.3% gap between urban residents who live in cities but do not carry urban hukou and urban residents with urban hukou in 2012 by 2% by 2020. Meanwhile, the plan also intends to offer welfare entitlements to people who have rural hukou (from rural migrants to urban residents who carry rural hukou), including education, welfare housing, and health care to at least 90% (about 100 million) of migrants by 2020. In fact, with this plan,

26775-425: The steady expansion of cities, property values of land near cities have significantly increased. Owners of these tracts of land may elect to give up agriculture in favor of renting out their homes to migrant workers. Furthermore, with the continued process of urbanization, land owners near cities can expect the central government to buy their land for a handsome sum sometime in the future. These benefits combined with

26950-509: The street party committee who visited families, persuading them to adhere to the mandate. In Shanghai, the families with a working-class background and those who lived in shanty housing neighborhoods were the most difficult to persuade to send their children to the countryside. In summer 1969, at the Shanghai Number 11 Textile Mill, 20 percent of the students, who were children of the factory workers, remained home after being requested to go to

27125-457: The system in response to protests and a changing economic system, while some Western experts question whether these changes have been of substance. The formal name for the system is huji . Within the huji system, a hukou is the registered residency status of a particular individual in this system. However, the term hukou is used colloquially to refer to the entire system, and it has been adopted by English-language audiences to refer to both

27300-440: The system leads to a wealth transfer to the wealthier urban regions from the poorer regions on the public sector level. Intra-family payments from the working-age members to their relatives in the rural areas counteract that to some extent. With the loosening of restrictions on migration in the 1980s came a large influx of rural residents seeking better opportunities in the cities. However, these migrant workers have had to confront

27475-424: The total number of graduates, who could neither continue their studies nor find a job. In Beijing, the number of lao sanjie was more than 400,000, but until April 1968, only a few thousand of them volunteered to go to the countryside. Meanwhile, from late 1967 to spring 1968, other municipal and provincial government offices started encouraging and organizing students to go to the countryside. On December 12, 1967,

27650-642: The two-tiered household registration system. Zhou did not mention rural educated youths in particular, indicating that the CCP's central leadership expected to continue redirecting most rural elementary and middle school graduates to return to their places of origins. Therefore, during the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement and afterwards, PRC policymakers, as well as scholars referred to resettled urban educated youths as sent-down urban youths ( chengzhenxiaxiang qingnan 城鎮下鄉青年  or xiafang qingnian 下放青年), and those that came from rural areas as returned rural youths ( huixiang qingnian 回鄉青年). Following

27825-500: The ups and downs of the PRC's economy and admission policies. On the one hand, educated youths that had gone to the countryside would return to cities in years when employment and admission opportunities increased. On the other hand, fresh graduates would also remain in cities during those years. For example, the blindindustrial overexpansion during the Great Leap Forward (GLF) added over 20 million jobs in cities in 1958 alone. Since settling down in cities whenever possible has always been

28000-750: The urban residents and the rural village officials’ ambivalent attitudes towards the sent-down youth movement, some local villagers were also unsure how to deal with the urban youth sent to their villages. In the Ganchazi commune in Heilongjiang, eighty-six youth from Shanghai---many who had troubled records and served time in Shanghai’s juvenile detention---were sent there. Locals found it challenging to deal with these youth who reportedly fought among themselves, gambled, drank, stole, and killed animals. Local villages in Anhui province that received youth from Shanghai who had criminal records encountered similar issues. The head of

28175-445: The urban-rural gap. This editorial not only quoted Mao Zedong's comment on the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement back in 1955 to justify the righteousness of the movement, but encouraged all urban educated youths to "return to hometown (i.e., the countryside) and make revolution locally" ( da hui laojia qu , jiudi nao geming 打回老家去，就地鬧革命). It was noteworthy that the editorial on January 18, 1967, deliberately distorted

28350-492: The villages to oversee the sent-down youth mobilization, wrote that local county and village officials were unprepared for the task of allocating the urban youth and “were afraid to make mistakes.” In Heilongjiang Province, local village officials scrambled to transport the sent-down youth from train stations to villages. In some villages in Heilongjiang, it was also challenging for the local officials to find enough housing and sufficient food to settle many urban youth. Apart from

28525-421: The workers and farmers was taught extensively at schools, and the lao sanjie were familiar with it. Since 1965, many middle schools had already started to organize students to go to the countryside to work for some time each semester, and government propaganda had been praising youths who labored in the fields. As a result, many lao sanjie initially went to the countryside voluntarily and enthusiastically. It

28700-478: The working-age." In another meeting in October, Zhou raised the number of rural and urban educated youths to be resettled to the countryside in the next eighteen years to 35 million. In the meanwhile, Zhou warned that such a number would further increase if birth control measures in cities were not well implemented. In other words, Zhou pointed out that the educated youth resettlement campaign must be cooperated with strictly enforced birth control measures in cities and

28875-453: The years preceding its establishment were characterized by growing efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to assert control over its populace. In 1950, the Minister of Public Security, Luo Ruiqing , published a statement detailing his vision for the implementation of the hukou system in the new era. By 1954, rural and urban citizens had been registered with the state, and rigorous regulations on

29050-497: Was considered more promising than production team's end-of-year distribution system, not to mention that the latter's income largely varied by the local situation and annual harvest. Moreover, state-owned farms employees considered themselves to be of higher political status or zhengzhi diwei than production team members/peasants. In other words, the conceptual and perceived gaps between workers and peasants, urban and rural areas, and manual and mental labors (later known collectively as

29225-460: Was evaluated based on the prosperity of local residents and the local economy, they had little incentive to improve the migrant workers' quality of life. In 2008, the central government passed the Labor Contract Law, which guaranteed equal access to jobs, established a minimum wage, and required employers to provide contracts to full-time employees that included employment benefits. However,

29400-506: Was even more challenging for the local government in Shanghai to persuade families that lived in shanty neighborhoods to send their children to the countryside. One government report written in 1969 documented that, in the Yaoshuilong neighborhood in Jiaozhou district in Shanghai, 70 percent of graduated students refused to go to the countryside. Although most lao sanjie eventually were sent to

29575-426: Was highly restricted, with official quotas at 0.15-0.2% per year and actual conversion rates at about 1.5%. In the following years, government oversight over the movement of people was expanded. In 1964, greater limits were imposed on migration to big cities, particularly major ones like Beijing and Shanghai, and in 1977 these regulations were furthered. Throughout this era, the hukou system was used as an instrument of

29750-496: Was linked to social policy, and those residents who held non-agricultural (i.e., urban) hukou status received benefits not available to their rural counterparts, and vice versa. Internal migration was also tightly controlled by the central government, and only in the past few decades have these restrictions been loosened. While this system has played a major role in China's fast economic growth, hukou has also promoted and aggravated social stratification and contributed significantly to

29925-440: Was not only a 30 million rural-to-urban migration, but also a phenomenon in which many false urban identity cards were sold to rural migrants for gaining urban benefits. It hence stimulated the state to implement another policy, "A Notice on Strictly Controlling Excessive Growth of 'Urbanization,'" in 1989 for regulating rural-to-urban migration. Under this policy, rural migrants were monitored again. 1992–2013 can be identified as

30100-436: Was only one-fifth of that of cha chang , around 200 yuan . In addition, the amount of allowance also varied by location (225 yuan in northern China and 185 yuan in southern China in 1964, and 250 yuan and 230 yuan respectively in 1965) and the distance between one's place of departure and destination (those who resettled in another province, or kuasheng anzhi 跨省安置 would receive an extra 20 yuan on transportation). On

30275-675: Was state-sponsored. However, with Deng Xiaoping 's rise to power in 1978 came the initiation of reforms that steadily began to alleviate some of the disparity between agricultural and non-agricultural hukou holders. Restrictions have been loosened on movement from rural areas to smaller cities, although migration to large cities such as Beijing and Tianjin is still heavily regulated. Greater autonomy has also been ceded to local governments in deciding quotas and eligibility criteria for converting hukou status. Legislation has been enacted that allow migrant workers to obtain temporary residency permits, although these permits do not allow them access to

30450-541: Was the border support youths or zhibian qingnian 支邊青年—a combination of male and female party cadres, young peasants, workers, technicians, veterans, and educated youths(mostly those from rural areas). Instead of returning to their places of origins in the countryside, these rural educated youths voluntarily or were organized ( dongyuan ) to go to borderlands (known as "go up to mountains" or shangshan 上山). Rural educated youths took up 18.6% of all border support youths that arrived at Xinjiang in 1961, and 17.5% in 1962. Unlike

30625-420: Was then conducted by many other big cities (including Nanjing , Tianjin , Guangzhou , and Shenzhen ) in 1999. The second kind was not applied to big cities but to certain selected towns and small cities. In 1997, the state implemented a policy that granted urban hukou to the rural migrants who had a stable job in their newly resided towns and small cities. Meanwhile, according to two 1997 government documents,

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