Over the past half century, migrants without a local household registration (hukou 户口) in China have received much attention from researchers and policymakers alike.Footnote 1 Without a hukou, migrants are unable to access the social and welfare benefits available to urban residents.Footnote 2 Numerous articles have investigated the adverse effects of this deprivation on the daily lives of migrants and have led to many calls for the relaxation of controls on hukou transfers.Footnote 3 The Chinese state has responded, setting a goal in its 2014 New Urbanization Plan to transfer the hukou of 100 million “floaters” by 2020. Today, less than two years from the target date, this goal is far from being met.Footnote 4 When confronted with this reality, it is critical to reflect on the differences between those who are eligible to apply for a hukou transfer and those who actually secure one.
Hukou transfer has already received some scholarly attention, and the factors contributing to a successful transfer are being increasingly studied. However, these studies are almost all conducted at the national level.Footnote 5 Today, hukou management is largely operated by city governments, who set entry barriers according to their vested interests.Footnote 6 As these interests and thus barriers vary across cities, so should the types of people who are successful in having their hukou transferred. The city, rather than the commonly used aggregated mass, should therefore be the focus of hukou research. Moreover, those who have successfully transferred hukou should have also met the application requirements; however, this is not the case in reverse. Many applicants who are encouraged by policies that state they are eligible for hukou transfer later find that they are not on the list of hukou winners. Their aspirations then turn to frustration. What in the hukou transfer process distinguishes those who are successful from those who are eligible to apply? This paper aims to investigate that gap.
The objective of this paper is twofold. First, it attempts to reveal the localized application requirements and evaluation criteria of the hukou transfer in Beijing. Second, it looks to uncover the consistencies and discrepancies between the stated requirements and real criteria. In so doing, we add a concrete example to the literature on the localization of hukou practices. More importantly, by revealing the gap between who can apply for hukou transfer and who is eventually granted hukou, this paper can help many “floaters” to form better decisions. It can also offer an alternative way forward for hukou reform and advance new potential research on this topic.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. First, it introduces the data and definitions. It then explores and compares who can apply for, and who obtains, Beijing hukou. The final section offers conclusions and discussions.
Data and Definition
This study uses the 0.1 per cent microdata sample of the Beijing 2010 Census. This sample includes 18,617 records with over 50 variables covering a wide range of topics. Admittedly, as repeat, onward and return migration patterns are very common in China, neither the census nor any other survey has direct information on migration and hukou history. However, indirect information, such as the place of birth, place of usual residence five years ago and current hukou registration place, is provided by the census. Today, as limitations on data persist, these data are widely used to infer who is a migrant and who has transferred hukou, a method that is followed by this paper.Footnote 7
A migrant in Beijing is defined as a person who, on the date of the census enumeration (1 November 2010), was living in Beijing, had lived in Beijing or had left his or her hukou place for at least six months, and had not been born in Beijing. If the migrant had Beijing hukou, then he or she is classified as a hukou migrant; otherwise the migrant is classified as a non-hukou migrant. Here, three points need special attention. First, Beijing municipality is chosen as the geographical region by which the populations are defined. This is not only in line with previous research on migrants in Beijing but also because hukou and its related benefits are still provided and allocated by the municipal government.Footnote 8 Second, our resident count is based on a six-month stay, which is different from previous research which uses a one-year length of stay. This difference is because in 1995 the reference period for a permanent resident was officially changed from one year to six months. The new time period has placed more migrants in their current place of residence; previously, migrant residents were undercounted.Footnote 9
The third noteworthy point is that our definition of migrants does not follow previous research, which uses place of regular residence five years ago. We use place of birth instead. Our definition largely avoids the selection bias inherent in previous studies, which exclude those migrants who have spent more than five years in their new place of residence and thus have a higher chance of hukou transfer. We note that by dividing migrants into hukou and non-hukou categories, both definitions rely on the questionable assumption that no migrant has a local hukou at first. But this assumption is much less questionable when defining migrants by birth place. Today, there are many return migrants who have kept their hukou in their hometown but who were living elsewhere five years ago. However, most babies are born in the place where their parents’ hukou is registered and so inherit their hukou from them. This means that for most people, place of birth is usually where their original hukou is registered. This hukou can then be transferred through migration.
We dropped three types of migrants from our sample. First, we excluded those below the legal working age (16 years of age). These migrants are unable to obtain a Beijing hukou by themselves; they would have to apply through a family-based transfer. For them, the hukou status of their parents is decisive and thus should be considered. This information, however, was unavailable, as the household identifier was removed from the census data, perhaps owing to confidentiality. This problem also affected those aged 60 or above, who are similarly subject to the family-based transfer criteria. Moreover, the local hukou of elderly migrants may have come from the state rather than the local authorities. This is because hukou management was centralized in the pre-reform era, a time when these migrants were in their 20s, the most common age for migration.Footnote 10 Third, we excluded those studying in university. University students have access only to a collective hukou (jitihu 集体户). This is a temporary status and is revoked once the student graduates. Removing these categories leaves 6,560 migrants in the sample: 1,226 hukou and 5,334 non-hukou migrants.
Who Can Apply for A Beijing hukou?
A cursory glance through government documents reveals that there are two pathways to a Beijing hukou: a family-based one and a work-based one. The latter is the focus of the current study. As mentioned above, information on family traits, which is necessary for studying the family-based transfer, is unavailable and so migrants eligible to follow this route are excluded from the sample. More importantly, hukou policies regarding family-based transfer are designed to meet national requirements rather than the city's own interests. Including these policies in the current research may deviate our attention away from the localized hukou practices in Beijing.
The application requirements for the work-based transfer route have never been clear cut but, after studying dozens of government documents, several guidelines can be inferred. The first one is regarding education. Before 2009, many documents issued by the Beijing Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau stated that a bachelor's degree was required to apply for a Beijing hukou.Footnote 11 This requirement was then raised to a master's degree in 2009.Footnote 12 But for our data, which were collected just one year later, the effect of this change should not be obvious. Therefore, we use the pre-2009 requirement to draw the hypothesis that migrants with a university education are more likely than others to be granted a Beijing hukou (H1).
Second, it is advantageous to work in a sector that contributes towards the development of Beijing's economy. According to many documents, contributing to Beijing's core priorities seems to be a prerequisite for the city's hukou application.Footnote 13 Although it has varied slightly over time, Beijing's urban master plan has generally emphasized the importance of maintaining the city's roles as national political centre; the capital city of a socialist country; national science and technology centre; and economic centre of northern China.Footnote 14 As such, migrants working in designated key sectors such as the civil service, public services, technology and research, and advanced business services should have a higher chance of being granted a Beijing hukou than others (H2a).Footnote 15 In addition, it is not only the sector that is important; it appears that level of skill and experience is also a decisive factor. Managers and professionals are said to be preferred in hukou applications.Footnote 16 Office workers, especially civil servants working for the central government, are also favoured. It is therefore expected that applicants working in these types of jobs and sectors are more likely to be granted a Beijing hukou than others (H2b).
The third guideline centres on residence. To guarantee that local hukou go to settlers rather than movers, a certain period of residence is always mandatory. The exact period of time required for Beijing was unclear at the time of data collection. However, as the period for large cities was set at five years in the New Urbanization Plan, we are convinced that this will be the minimum period required for such a megacity as Beijing. Therefore, those who have lived in Beijing for more than five years are expected to have a greater chance of obtaining a local hukou (H3a). Moreover, there are additional hukou transfer channels in the towns and villages within the Beijing municipality. In 1997, the Beijing government announced that migrants living and working in towns could apply for a Beijing hukou. This channel was then closed in 2005.Footnote 17 However, in the same year, a new hukou channel was opened in Beijing's villages. Since then, graduates employed as village cadres have been, and continue to be, granted Beijing hukou.Footnote 18 Thus, Beijing hukou applications in the municipality's villages and towns are more likely to be successful than applications for hukou in the city (H3b).
The last guideline is intended to help the less-developed suburbs attract more talented workers and balance development across the capital. Before 2009, when the education requirement for hukou transfer was at the undergraduate level, any fresh graduate working in Beijing's suburbs was eligible to apply for a Beijing hukou. However, for those working in the downtown districts, this only applied if the graduate was working in one of the key sectors. Since the education requirement was raised to a masters’ degree, those with a first degree are only allowed to apply for a hukou if they work in the suburbs.Footnote 19 Further scrutiny of how strictly this guideline is applied requires information on workplace, which unfortunately the census does not provide. In order to fully explore the effects of the hukou application requirements, more detailed data are needed, which calls for future improvement in data collection.
Who Is Granted Beijing Hukou?
Migrants, eligible applicants and winners
Applying the guidelines to the microdata, it is evident that there is a huge gap between those coming to Beijing and those who are eligible to apply for a hukou. In Beijing in 2010, only 21 per cent of migrants had a university education; 24 per cent worked in the key sectors; 33 per cent worked in management/professional/clerical positions; and 13 per cent met both the education and job requirements. Further, only 17 per cent of migrants lived in towns or villages, even though the chance of being granted a hukou was greater there. There is, then, a gap also between where migrants want to live and where the Beijing government wants them to live. Yet, with regard to duration of residence, over half of all migrants had stayed for at least five years, which meets the hukou application guidelines. Long-term migrants make a huge contribution to Beijing and aspire to settle there; however, the fact is the vast majority are actually not eligible to apply for a hukou (Table 1).
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics on Migrants, Eligible Applicants and hukou Winners
Source:
0.1 per cent microdata sample of the Beijing 2010 Census.
Notes:
*p < .1, **p < .05, ***p < .01 (significance level is from Chi-2 test).
Hukou winners differ significantly from the rest of the migrants in terms of their education, jobs and residency, which points to the overall effectiveness of the application guidelines. In 2010, over half of those who were granted a Beijing hukou had a university education; 60 per cent worked in the designated key sectors; 75 per cent were in key jobs; and 92 per cent had lived in Beijing for at least five years. Compare this with the same figures for non-hukou migrants: only 13 per cent had a university education; 17 per cent worked in key sectors; 24 per cent were in key jobs; and 41 per cent had lived in Beijing for at least five years. However, contrary to the application guideline on where to live, hukou migrants were less represented in towns and villages than non-hukou ones. This contradiction may be the result of the failure of this specific guideline or a tendency of potential hukou winners to choose to live in the city. We use a model-based approach later to determine which explanation is right.
The majority of the Beijing hukou winners fulfil all application requirements, but the converse is not true. Less than half of all migrants with a university education and working in one of the prioritized sectors have managed to acquire a hukou. This share drops to about one-third for migrants in key occupations and living in Beijing for at least five years. More importantly, hukou transfers are not distributed equally among the eligible migrants. For those with a postgraduate education, 79 per cent were granted a Beijing hukou, which is more than double the share of those with a first degree. Similarly, the share of hukou winners in the civil service is double that of winners working in advanced business services. These differences suggest a discrepancy between application guidelines and the true evaluation criteria.
Consistencies, gaps and discrepancies
In the first model in Table 2, we can determine that the eligibility requirements are generally consistent with the real evaluation criteria. This model predicts the probability of acquiring a Beijing hukou for all migrants. It shows that migrants are more likely to be granted a Beijing hukou if they have a university education; work in the required sectors; have professional, technical, management or clerical positions; have stayed in Beijing for at least five years; and reside in villages. These outcomes confirm most of our previous hypotheses. They also show that the underrepresentation of hukou migrants in villages does not point to the ineffectiveness of the guidelines on residence. A migrant self-selection process, in which many eligible applicants choose not to live in villages, may be responsible instead.Footnote 20 Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that fulfilling the hukou application requirements is generally a necessary prerequisite for obtaining a Beijing hukou. These findings highlight the localized nature of current hukou practices.
Table 2: Logistic Regression Models of the Determinants of Acquiring Beijing hukou
Source:
0.1 per cent microdata sample of the Beijing 2010 Census.
Notes:
Dependent variable: 0 = non-hukou migrants; 1 = hukou migrants. *** p < 0.01, * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05.
Although there is a general consistency between application requirements and evaluation criteria, gaps are evident in education level and job sector. Up until a year before the collection of the data, a first degree, rather than a postgraduate degree, was sufficient to apply for a Beijing hukou. But the coefficient for a first degree is about only half that for a postgraduate degree. Likewise, archival research finds no preference in the requirements for specific sectors among those that serve the city's core functions. However, when it comes to actually obtaining a hukou, there is a bias towards the civil service.Footnote 21 This means that for Beijing, political administration is considered to be a more important sector than other key areas. Given these gaps, research on hukou transfer eligibility and award should not only be conducted in a place-based context but also be juxtaposed and compared. Moreover, hukou reforms should not only consider the application requirements but also take into account the gaps found here. After all, a hukou hopeful will find it more frustrating and deflating to be rejected after going through an application process.
Two minor discrepancies were found between the application requirements and evaluation criteria. First, the effect of managerial and administrative post on a migrant's hukou prospects is not positive, as expected, but insignificant. This may be the result of the nuances in these types of jobs. Among managers and administrators, only those in charge of the state-sector or world-renowned enterprises and organizations are invited to enter the hukou application system.Footnote 22 However, in 2010, only 6.5 per cent of migrants worked in the state sector. Thus, for the key-occupation policy to be fully examined, a further breakdown of managers and administrators by firm type, size and reputation is needed, which unfortunately we cannot derive from our data. This problem actually confirms the complexity of the hukou system, which is carefully designed, meticulously tailored and constantly modified for the city's ever-changing needs.
Another discrepancy lies in the effect of living in towns, which should be positive but turns out to be insignificant. The fact that the relevant policy was only implemented for eight years (between 1997 and 2005) may have undermined the expected effect. There were also fewer migrants during this period than in the following period up to 2010. The inability of towns to attract powerful firms may further erode the effect. This is because most migrants in the private sector acquire a Beijing hukou through their firms. The ability of firms to obtain hukou for their eligible workers via district authority quotas, which are set by the municipal government, then becomes instrumental.Footnote 23 However, large and successful firms tend to concentrate more in the city than in towns. Consequently, the advantage of having access to the extra hukou channel in towns may be cancelled out, making the effect of living there insignificant. This interpretation is validated by Models 2 and 3 in Table 2. Here, working in technology and research has a negative effect for migrants in towns and a positive one for those in the city. Therefore, opening extra hukou channels in towns may not be enough to resolve the mismatch between where migrants want to live and where the government wants them to live. Changing the allocation rules more fundamentally and cultivating a more attractive environment may also be important.
Conclusion and Discussion
This paper takes a widely known but rarely used localized perspective to compare those who are eligible to apply for a transfer of their hukou to Beijing with those who successfully manage to do so. To our knowledge, it is the first study to undertake such a comparison by matching an archival analysis of hukou policies with an empirical analysis of the 2010 Census microdata. We find that migrants who meet the application guidelines have a higher chance of acquiring a Beijing hukou. Decisive factors include having a university education, working in a key occupation, living in Beijing for more than five years and being located in a village. Migrants who best meet the city's needs are also prioritized. In order to maintain its role as China's political centre, the capital of a socialist country, the national centre for science and technology and economic centre for northern China, Beijing has a vested interest in attracting the best talent and to balance development across the municipality. As such, who is eligible for and who should be granted hukou are both decided locally in order to best meet the city's core objectives. Eligibility is more often than not essential to being granted a hukou.
Significant gaps between migrants, eligible applicants and hukou winners have been revealed. In 2010, most migrants in Beijing failed to meet the education and job requirements, and they did not live where Beijing wished them to live. Even among the limited number of qualified applicants, the chances of obtaining a hukou still varied. Those with a postgraduate education had a much higher chance than those with an undergraduate education, a bias rarely mentioned in official documents. Preference was also given to those who worked in the civil service over workers in other key sectors. This was also a “hidden” rule. Although the Beijing government clearly sets out the eligibility requirements for hukou, it is less clear about what is needed to actually obtain one.
The hukou system is a complicated one and requires further exploration. This study was unable to scrutinize the hukou policies that favour those working in Beijing's suburbs as the data on both place of work and residence were not available. We were also unable to examine whether managers or administrators were better placed to obtain a hukou, as both roles were taken as a whole in our data. Other more subtle factors, such as academic performance, have been left unexplored, as this information was unavailable in the census. All of these omitted variables point to the possibility of a bias in the results. Additionally, we could only infer from the data who was a migrant who had successfully transferred hukou, as this information could not be read directly. All these limitations mean that there is much room for further research. This research should look to employ improved techniques and also enhanced datasets. Opportunities to look at hukou transfer across cities and over time may then emerge as a topic for research, one that has only been lightly touched upon by the current analysis.
Although the focus of this article is on Beijing, our contributions go beyond the capital. There will also be gaps between migrants, eligible applicants and hukou winners in other first-tier cities such as Shanghai. These gaps can be used to the local authority's advantage when deciding on the most suitable candidates as well as allowing it to have the final say on hukou transfer. However, they can also shatter many migrants’ dreams of acquiring resident status in their adopted city and lead to potential social unrest. To avoid such unrest, migrants should be better informed about these gaps, and hukou reforms should be formulated to this end. The less attractive cities can also gain some inspiration from our results. Offering the chance of hukou status was not enough for the towns in Beijing's outskirts to attract talent from the city centre. Likewise, less developed cities elsewhere cannot compete against more developed ones in the ever fiercer intercity competition simply by raising the short-term value of hukou status. More resources should be mobilized to improve the overall city quality. Moreover, a new potential field in hukou research has been revealed. This is a field in which a place-centred perspective should be adopted, archival and empirical analyses combined, and the gap between who can apply and who is granted hukou explored and then compared across cities.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to Danny Dorling for detailed comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This work is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41801146), the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (18YJC840022), the PEAK Urban programme funded by UKRI's Global Challenge Research Fund (ES/P011055/1) and the Clarendon Fund.
Disclosure statement
No conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Biographical notes
Tao LIU is an assistant professor in urban planning and a faculty member of the Centre for Urban Future Research at Peking University. His research interests include internal migration, urbanization and land policy.
Qiujie SHI is a PhD candidate in geography and a Clarendon Scholar at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include global cities, social inequalities and comparative urbanism.
