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Authors: Chao Li (University of Waikato) John Gibson (University of Waikato) Abstract China's local populations can be counted in two ways; by how many people have hukou household registration from each place and by how many people actually reside in each place. The counts differ by the non-hukou migrants - people that move from their place of registration - who have grown from fewer than five million when reform began in 1978 to over 200 million by 2010. For most of the first three decades of the reform era, the hukou count was used to produce per capita GDP figures. In coastal provinces the resident count is many millions more than the hukou count, while for migrant-sending provinces it is the reverse, creating a systematic and time-varying distortion in provincial GDP per capita. Moreover, a sharp discontinuity occurred when provinces recently switched from the hukou count to the resident count when reporting GDP per capita. A double-count also resulted because some provinces switched before others and initial resident counts were incomplete. This paper describes the changing definition of provincial populations in China and their impact on inequality in provincial GDP per capita. We show that much of the apparent increase in inter-provincial inequality disappears once a consistent series of GDP per resident is used.

Thématique 2 [ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Thomas Vendryes Paru dans : China Economic Review Volume 22, Issue 4, December 2011, Pages 669-692 Sustainable natural resource use in rural China - Has China Passed the Lewis Turning Point? CERDI 2009 - CERDI 2009 Abstract Rural-urban migration flows are a crucial corollary of economic development. The adverse or beneficial effects of internal migration, for sending as well as receiving areas, and the definition of optimal migration policies, have remained much discussed issues since the seminal works of Harris and Todaro (1970). This debate is especially acute in China where the "household registration system" (hukou) acts as a strong constraint on individual migration. This paper aims to assess the consequences of hukou through a simple model of a developing dual economy with overlapping generations. Contrary to existing studies focused on the contemporaneous allocation of economic resources, it deals with the dynamic consequences of migration flows and migration policies. It shows that, in fairly general circumstances, hukou-related migration constraints can actually hasten development, understood as the transfer of the labor force to the modern sector, driven by capital accumulation. The hukou system could thus be one of the causes of the extremely high Chinese saving rate and of the high pace of Chinese development. Insights from the model are confronted with stylized facts from the Chinese development, and theoretical results are especially consistent with the effects of the 2001 "towns and small cities" reform.

Chen, Binkai; Lu, Ming; Zhong, Ninghua In: Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series, February 2012 Abstract This paper provides a new explanation for China's extremely low consumption-to-GDP ratio, highlighting the constraints of the "household registration system" (Hukou) on China's household consumption. Our baseline results show that the consumption of migrants without an urban Hukou is 30.7% lower than that of urban residents. Moreover, consumption heterogeneity cannot be explained by migration effects, culture, social norms, habits or some other forms of household heterogeneity. Further studies on the composition of household consumption have shown that the gaps are largest in areas such as education and culture, durable goods and health. As both the number and income level of migrants are rising, the constraining effects of Hukou on household consumption will continue to increase.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org.gate3.inist.fr/10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.11.002 [ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Shiqing Jiang (Fudan University, Shanghai), Ming Lu (Zhejiang University, Hangzhou), Hiroshi Sato (Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo) Paru dans : World Development, Volume 40, Issue 6, June 2012, Pages 1190-1200 Summary This paper presents the impact of income inequality on subjective well-being using data from the 2002 Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) Survey. We find that people feel unhappy with between-group inequality, as measured by the income gap between migrants without local urban hukou (household registration identity) and urban residents, irrespective of whether they are urban residents with or without local hukou. However, when we control for identity-related inequality and other individual, household, and city-level characteristics, inequality (as measured by city-level Gini coefficients) positively correlates with happiness. This study contributes to the inequality-happiness literature by distinguishing between the different effects of between-group and general inequality on happiness.

Luo, Rumin (2012). Across the institutional passage of migration: Hukou system in China. InterDisciplines : journal of history and sociology, 3(1), 120-147.

Thématique n° 2 [ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Guo Chen Paru dans : Cities, Volume 29, Issue 4, August 2012, Pages 252-263 Abstract This paper provides first-hand empirical evidence about the differentiation of housing conditions among China's urban poor families based on a case study of Nanjing. The main findings include: (1) the Hukou family registration system has strong differential effects on poor families' housing conditions; (2) housing conditions among the urban poor are tightly associated with privatization and home ownership, where non-owners face more severe housing difficulties than nominal owners; and (3) resettlement has played a positive role in improving the poor's housing conditions, but its positive effects are only present in cases where work units or the government has taken the responsibility of housing the resettled poor. These findings show that housing the urban poor in post-reform China is largely: (1) path-dependent, (2) privatization-oriented, and (3) development-driven, and a mechanism that can pro-actively ensure the poor's basic right to housing is still lacking. Highlights ► We investigate the housing differentiation among China's urban poor families. ► We examine the variation from three perspectives. ► We show housing variations by Hukou types. ► We show housing variations by housing tenure and distribution types. ► We show housing variations due to housing change and resettlement.

Authors: Cai, Jianming; Yang, Zhenshan; Webster, Douglas; Song, Tao; Gulbrandson, Andrew Source: Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Volume 53, Number 1, 1 April 2012 , pp. 38-55(18) Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Abstract: Abstract The spectacular growth of Chinese cities since the 1980s is often theorised as reflecting the advantages of latecomer development (ALD). ALD has been more effective in cosmopolitan, globally accessible coastal cities than outer cities. As leading cities, like Shanghai, close the development gap, the potential for `easy' ALD growth falls off rapidly. Because institution building is more difficult than firm-based growth, ALD strategies may generate rapid short-term economic growth but not sustainable development. Accordingly, Chongqing municipality, with a population of 33 million, in West China, is pursuing a beyond latecomer advantage model. This is characterised by: (i) reducing poverty and rural-urban disparity through accelerated urbanisation, rural-urban integration and emphasising human resource development; (ii) upgrading the value added of Chongqing's economy through targeting of FDI and incentives to local start-ups; (iii) endogenous development, reducing risks from external shocks; (iv) Hukou reform; (v) establishing a land use conversion certificate market to rationalise land use; (vi) emphasis on morality to address crime/corruption; (vii) recognition of the importance of amenity in attracting investment and talent; and (viii) establishing a longer developmental time perspective. This paper explores this Chongqing model in detail. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8373.2012.01474.x

Authors: Cai, Jianming; Yang, Zhenshan; Webster, Douglas; Song, Tao; Gulbrandson, Andrew Source: Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Volume 53, Number 1, 1 April 2012 , pp. 38-55(18) Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Abstract: The spectacular growth of Chinese cities since the 1980s is often theorised as reflecting the advantages of latecomer development (ALD). ALD has been more effective in cosmopolitan, globally accessible coastal cities than outer cities. As leading cities, like Shanghai, close the development gap, the potential for `easy' ALD growth falls off rapidly. Because institution building is more difficult than firm-based growth, ALD strategies may generate rapid short-term economic growth but not sustainable development. Accordingly, Chongqing municipality, with a population of 33 million, in West China, is pursuing a beyond latecomer advantage model. This is characterised by: (i) reducing poverty and rural-urban disparity through accelerated urbanisation, rural-urban integration and emphasising human resource development; (ii) upgrading the value added of Chongqing's economy through targeting of FDI and incentives to local start-ups; (iii) endogenous development, reducing risks from external shocks; (iv) Hukou reform; (v) establishing a land use conversion certificate market to rationalise land use; (vi) emphasis on morality to address crime/corruption; (vii) recognition of the importance of amenity in attracting investment and talent; and (viii) establishing a longer developmental time perspective. This paper explores this Chongqing model in detail.

Chen, Yiu Por. (2012). Land Use Rights, Market Transition, and Rural-urban Labor Migration in China (1980-84). UC Los Angeles: The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Online at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3pk220mn# This paper provides a systematic analysis of the way shifts in property utilization rights in China induced another sequence of institutional changes that led to the rise of rural-urban labor migration from 1980 to 1984, a critical period in the country's market transition. I show that the 1980s' Household Responsibility System (HRS), which brought family farming back from the communal system, endowed rural households not only with land use rights, but also with de facto labor allocation rights. These shifts in property relationspromoted a growth in agricultural market size as well as the emergence of intraprovincial non-hukou rural-urban migration, which may have made labor retention policies such as the small township strategy ineffective, and may have given the government an incentive to deregulate its subsequent labor market policy.

The spectacular growth of Chinese cities since the 1980s is often theorised as reflecting the advantages of latecomer development (ALD). ALD has been more effective in cosmopolitan, globally accessible coastal cities than outer cities. As leading cities, like Shanghai, close the development gap, the potential for 'easy' ALD growth falls off rapidly. Because institution building is more difficult than firm-based growth, ALD strategies may generate rapid short-term economic growth but not sustainable development. Accordingly, Chongqing municipality, with a population of 33 million, in West China, is pursuing a beyond latecomer advantage model. This is characterised by: (i) reducing poverty and rural-urban disparity through accelerated urbanisation, rural-urban integration and emphasising human resource development; (ii) upgrading the value added of Chongqing's economy through targeting of FDI and incentives to local start-ups; (iii) endogenous development, reducing risks from external shocks; (iv) Hukou reform; (v) establishing a land use conversion certificate market to rationalise land use; (vi) emphasis on morality to address crime/corruption; (vii) recognition of the importance of amenity in attracting investment and talent; and (viii) establishing a longer developmental time perspective. This paper explores this Chongqing model in detail.

[ScienceDirect, via BiblioSHS] Auteurs : Cai Jianming, Yang Zhenshan, Webster Douglas, Song Tao, Gulbrandson Andrew Paru dans : ASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT Volume: 53 Issue: 1 Special Issue: SI Pages: 38-55 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2012.01474.x ABSTRACT: The spectacular growth of Chinese cities since the 1980s is often theorised as reflecting the advantages of latecomer development (ALD). ALD has been more effective in cosmopolitan, globally accessible coastal cities than outer cities. As leading cities, like Shanghai, close the development gap, the potential for easy ALD growth falls off rapidly. Because institution building is more difficult than firm-based growth, ALD strategies may generate rapid short-term economic growth but not sustainable development. Accordingly, Chongqing municipality, with a population of 33 million, in West China, is pursuing a beyond latecomer advantage model. This is characterised by: (i) reducing poverty and rural-urban disparity through accelerated urbanisation, rural-urban integration and emphasising human resource development; (ii) upgrading the value added of Chongqing's economy through targeting of FDI and incentives to local start-ups; (iii) endogenous development, reducing risks from external shocks; (iv) Hukou reform; (v) establishing a land use conversion certificate market to rationalise land use; (vi) emphasis on morality to address crime/corruption; (vii) recognition of the importance of amenity in attracting investment and talent; and (viii) establishing a longer developmental time perspective. This paper explores this Chongqing model in detail.

Thématique n° 2 [ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Hui Wang, Lanlan Wang, Fubing Su, Ran Tao Paru dans : Habitat International, Volume 36, Issue 2, April 2012, Pages 201-209 Abstract Rural residential land represents one of the most important land use types in China. However, the literature so far has paid insufficient attention to the patterns and efficiencies of this type of land use. To fill in this gap, this paper uses a national survey to analyze the institutional setups for rural residential land use, to assess the effectiveness of existing regulations, and to evaluate the efficiencies in rural residential land use. Farmers' subjective receptiveness toward rural residential property regulation reform is also investigated. We find that rural residential properties are inefficiently utilized under the existing land use regulations, that those who are younger and who had previous migration experiences are more likely to support the free trading of rural residential properties while the village cadres are more likely to oppose it. A coordinated policy reform package that includes free trading of rural residential properties and Household Registration System to facilitate permanent migration out of the countryside is proposed to address the existing efficiencies in China's rural residential land use. Highlights ► Rural residential land is an important land use type in China. ► Under existing regulations rural residential land is inefficiently used. ► A coordinated land-Hukou reform package is needed to address the inefficiency.

Abstract Taking Beijing as a case study, this paper analyses new trends in peri-urbanisation and the city's planning responses after 2000 in China. The results of the analysis show that the percentage of temporary migrant residents continues to grow in the peri-urban region and the social inequalities in relation to quality of life between local people and migrants have increased there. In particular, there is a concentration of thousands of young and well-educated migrants in the peri-urban region, resulting in a new kind of urban slum. Sprawling development still dominates Beijing's fringe. New planning policies related to an urban-rural integration strategy have played a positive role in improving living conditions in rural areas and reducing the social and economic gaps between urban and rural areas in the peri-urban region. However, planning in the peri-urban region is still facing new challenges due to vertically and horizontally fragmented management, growing market forces, and social discrimination caused by the remnants of the hukou mechanism. This suggests that it will not be easy to achieve the planning goal of urban-rural integration and harmony society unless further actions are taken to enhance political capacity of planning system in Beijing. The capacity-building of planning should be facilitated if institutional innovations can be made in arrangements of power, rights, public resources, accountability, and legitimacy in the planning system. Highlights ► Many new trends in peri-urbanisation have appeared after 2000 in Beijing. ► Peri-urbanisation contributes to growth in social inequalities. ► It will not be easy to achieve the planning goal of urban-rural integration. ► New urban-rural integration policies are facing challenges. ► The institutional capacity of planning needs to be reinforced.

[ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Feng Hu [et al.] Paru dans : China Economic Review, Volume 22, Issue 1, March 2011, Pages 64-74 Abstract Although there is a rich literature on internal temporary migration in China, few existing studies deal with the permanent migration decision of China's rural labor. This paper will fill this gap and deal with the permanent migration choice made by rural migrants with the China General Social Survey (CGSS) data. Our results show that compared with their circular counterparts, permanent migrants tend to stay within the home provinces and are more likely to have stable jobs and earn high incomes and thus are more adapted to urban lives. We also find that more educated and more experienced migrants tend to be permanent urban residents, while the relationship of age and the probability of permanent migration is inverse U-shaped. Due to the restrictions of the current hukou system and the lack of rural land rental market, those people with more children and more land at home are more likely to migrate circularly rather than permanently. Research Highlights ► It's the first to examine the permanent migration choice by China's rural migrants. ► We employ a unique nationally representative dataset. ► Our findings are robust to different definitions of "permanent migrant". ► Our findings provide a new insight and have important policy implications.

A State Council directive made welcome changes to the household registration system, but so much more is needed

Author : Nate Berg Feb 29, 2012 Why China's Urbanization Isn't Creating a Middle Class Nate Berg Feb 29, 2012 11 Comments Why China's Urbanization Isn't Creating a Middle Class Reuters Share Print Share on emailEmail The rapid rate of development in China manifests itself most clearly in its cities. With some populations rising into the tens of millions, China's cities are the economic powerhouses of the country, and are helping to create a whole new era of financial prosperity. For some observers, this translates into 1.3 billion people who now have the money to afford the sort of commercial goods many of the country's factories had previously been producing for the affluent populations of other countries. China is seeing its own affluence rise, and some surmise that this will translate into a Western-style nation of relatively well-off consumers; that, as this report from the McKinsey Global Institute suggests, China's middle class is emerging to help propel the country's economic success even higher. The only problem is that this middle class doesn't actually exist. And unless decades-old rules change, it won't. In a recent paper published in the journal Eurasian Geography and Economics, geographer and University of Washington professor Kam Wing Chan argues that all of the country's urban growth and prosperity is not actually filtering down to the majority of the rising urban population. The reason is that the majority of the urban population is prevented from fully participating in the booming urban economy because of a Mao-era rule that draws a harsh line between those from urban areas and those from rural ones [...]

China has finished the "urbanization of place" but not of people, and the main obstacle is the household registration system