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Call for New Residence System
Chinese lawmakers are calling for a new registered permanent residence system adaptable to the emerging market economy in China, replacing the existing one that restricts people's freedom to migrate, and divides the country into two distinctive urban and rural worlds.
The lawmakers, who are here for the annual session of the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, said the existing household registration system is no longer suitable to the changing situation characterized by massive migration of workers and professionals.
The existing system confines urban residents to cities and towns with housing, medical, education and employment benefits, and farmers to rural areas. Under the system, farmers are denied the benefits available to their urban counterparts and are permitted to seek underpaid, dirty jobs shunned by permanent urban residents.
In his proposal submitted to the session this week, Wu Minghui, an NPC deputy, calls for the enactment of a law on residence registration adaptable to a market economy, securing both urban and rural residents the freedom to migrate, and equal opportunities for employment, education and housing.
The proposal is designed to promote the transfer of excessive rural labor, and the process of urbanization, and put an end to the practice of separating urban and rural people in residence registration.
Citing an example, he said that there is one migrant worker without permanent residence rights in every five people in Beijing.
In Zhongguancun, an area with thousands of high-tech companies and research institutes in the capital city, about 100,000 young people with college education are currently employed by the high- tech firms without permanent residence rights in Beijing.
A deputy from Beijing said he could not imagine Zhongguancun's smooth operation if the 100,000 young people were driven back to places of their permanent residence as rural farmers have experienced in the past.
Economists say a free flow of human resources is a natural prerequisite for a market economy, and it will hinder regional economic integration if the artificial dividing line between rural and urban China is not removed.
Without economic integration on a national scale, China would not be able to meet the challenge of global economic integration, they said.
Cai Fang, director of the Population Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a major think tank in China, said the existing household registration system dividing the country into rural and urban areas has long been blamed for inefficient distribution of resources, resulting in an excessive concentration of resources in urban areas and a brain drain from developing areas.
An on-line survey conducted recently by a famous dotcom company has shown that "reform of the registered permanent residence system to promote the flow of human resources" is among the issues that people are most concerned about.
The current registered permanent resident system was set up in 1958, which sets strict limits on migration of farmers to cities and towns.
Duan Youlin, an NPC deputy, described the existing system as one that has restricted the mobility of the population and hindered the process of urbanization.
He calls for measures to make the urban permanent residence available to farmers who have legitimate permanent residence in towns or cities, a stable job and sources of income in a move to make a breakthrough in the process of urbanization.
Duan said he is happy to see that the Chinese government has already begun to address the issue, as mentioned in the draft plan for economic and social development for 2001 and 2005. The plan was submitted last week by Premier Zhu Rongji to the ongoing NPC session for deliberation and approval.
Among the proposed measures in the plan, the government is going to gradually introduce a new system, and lift irrational restrictions on farmers' employment in urban areas.
Lu Xueyi, a deputy and a sociologist, said the proposed measures "are intended to create a sound employment environment for a free flow of human resources".
Nearly 400 million Chinese now work and live in urban China, making an urbanization rate of about 30 percent, well below 50 percent in medium-developed countries.
But the 900 million Chinese farmers could not become urban residents in exact the same way as in industrialized countries, experts said.
China is well advised to give free rein to the migration of farmers from rural areas to small cities and towns, while only personnel and workers badly needed by big cities should be permitted to migrate to such big cities.
According to the plan, about 40 million farmers will be transferred to non-agriculture industries in the coming five years.
Dr. Liu Dezhong, with the Population Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said it remains a priority to reduce the benefits provided automatically by the registered permanent residence system to urban residents, while setting up a sound social security system.
In addition, an identification system should be introduced so that each resident will be given one life-long ID code to promote the flow of human resources in an orderly way, he said.
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