Acquiring a Beijing hukou: Who Is Eligible and Who Is Successful?

Abstract

Using a localized perspective, this paper explores the gap between the eligibility criteria for a Beijing hukou (household registration) and the reality of successfully acquiring one. By comparing those who are eligible to apply with those who actually succeed in gaining a hukou, it reveals that hukou practices are operated locally to serve the city's development needs. It also reveals huge gaps between migrants, eligible applicants and hukou winners. Most migrants in Beijing are not eligible to apply for a local hukou. However, among those limited applicants who can apply, those with a postgraduate education and who serve the capital's political functions are more likely than others to win a hukou, an advantage not pointed out in government documents. These “hidden” rules are most likely set intentionally by the city so that it can maintain absolute control over hukou transfers; however, at the same time, they frustrate migrants who meet the stated requirements but who are in reality still unlikely to ever acquire a Beijing hukou. These findings open up a novel perspective for exploring the people–city nexus in China during the migration process and highlight the gaps between policy and reality for those who can apply for a Beijing hukou and those who actually win one.

Household Registration, Land Property Rights, and Differences in Migrants’ Settlement Intentions—A Regression Analysis in the Pearl River Delta

“…Specifically, the establishment of the points-based household registration system erected a hidden barrier to urban settlement for farming populations. The system may continue to enlarge the urban-rural divide [11]. In the long term, the household registration system provides more favorable conditions for urban-urban migrants than for rural-urban migrants, facilitating their fulfillment of the requirements in the points-based system.…”

“…Therefore, gradual household registration reform must be based on a certain signal mechanism. Regarding local policy implementation, the points-based system reform implemented in various regions is primarily based on migrants' income, education, years lived in the city, and social security insurance payments [2,11]. Migrants with medium-to-low socioeconomic status are overlooked, as are self-employed individuals with substantial incomes but who do not have social security insurance, and floating migrants willing to relinquish their farmland for urban registration status (which may free up more farmland and house foundation land for farming village residents).…”

“…China's first-tier and second-tier cities employ a points-based household registration system through which they obtain the skilled individuals they require for development [11]. The general consensus is that rural-urban migrants wish to settle in cities with their families.…”

Building City Walls: Reordering the Population through Beijing’s Upside-Down Villages

“…Second, the recent and emerging scholarship examining state strategies of population control within China’s first-tier cities. Within this literature, a number of scholars examine the household registration system, or hukou 户口 system, as a form of administrative control (Johnson, 2017; Guo and Liang, 2017; Zhang, 2018; Liu and Shi, 2020). Others examine nonadministrative means of population control, including the removal of labor-intensive industries from cities (Zhang, 2018), restrictions to schooling for migrant children (Friedman, 2018), and the aforementioned eviction campaign in Beijing (Friedman, 2017; Pils, 2020).…”

Changes in population movement make COVID-19 spread differently from SARS

“…The closing economic gap between the coast and inland under China's strong commitment to regional balanced development has also made a contribution (Démurger and Xu, 2011). Moreover, the continued strictness of getting household registration (hukou) in first-tier cities and the recent lift of restrictions elsewhere have facilitated a geographically more even distribution of internal migrants in China (Liu and Shi, 2019). A future nationwide epidemic is now possible to be triggered from almost any large city; its control in future will be even harder again.…”