Table Of ContentCurrent Chinese Economic Report Series
Jiahua Pan
Houkai Wei Editors
Annual Report
on Urban
Development
of China 2013
Current Chinese Economic Report Series
More information about this series at h ttp://www.springer.com/series/11028
Jiahua Pan (cid:129) Houkai Wei
Editors
Annual Report on Urban
Development of China 2013
Editors
Jiahua Pan Houkai Wei
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Beijing , China Beijing , China
Sponsored by Innovation Project of CASS
ISSN 2194-7937 ISSN 2194-7945 (electronic)
Current Chinese Economic Report Series
ISBN 978-3-662-46323-9 ISBN 978-3-662-46324-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-46324-6
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Preface: Breaking the Existing Pattern of Rights
and P rivileges to Accelerate the Process of
Citizenization
I n China, the process of allowing more rural migrants into urban areas to become
registered city residents (citizenization) remains stagnant despite its importance to
the Chinese government and the existence of a national consensus about it. Why is
that? Is experience available from other countries? How do we solve this problem?
Perhaps through institutional inertia, vested interests are hindering the process of
citizenization in China. Derived from China’s h ukou system, or household registra-
tion system, that unfairly favors urban residents over rural ones, the inequitable
distribution of benefi ts between institutionally favored groups and others, and
between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private companies, for example, has
resulted in advantaged groups and vested interests obviously wanting to maintain
and cement this pattern while the disadvantaged groups and those whose interests
are damaged are unable to change it.
In China, cities can compulsorily purchase land from farmers at low or even no
costs, but most profi ts from added land value are usually unavailable to farmers who
rely on land for a living, generation after generation. Assuming annual profi ts of one
trillion yuan1 from land trades and transfers across China, then China’s cities can
absorb a total of 10 million rural migrants at the cost of 100,000 yuan per migrant
or 20 million at the cost of 50,000 per migrant. Unfortunately, children of migrant
workers in China are deprived of the right to compulsory education despite the fact
that these workers pay taxes in their host cities and their employers pay the so-called
“city construction fees” and “educational surcharge”. Payments to migrant workers
should be able to cover basic expenses of the family. In particular, they should cover
not only the costs of necessities and the living support for dependents such as the
elderly and the disabled, but also the cost of raising children. In some cities, how-
ever, the rights and interests of migrant workers are overlooked. Local governments
may go so far as to conspire with relevant companies to underpay and/or postpone
payment to these workers. Even some state-owned organizations offer unequal
1 W u Jinglian noted at the China Development Forum held on March 23–25, 2013 that the Chinese
government had earned 30 trillion yuan from expropriating farmland for urbanization, http://
fi nance.qq.com/a/20130323/001590.htm
v
vi Preface: Breaking the Existing Pattern of Rights and Privileges to Accelerate…
opportunities and payments to employees depending on whether they subscribe to
the aforementioned unfair institutional arrangements or not. Decision makers in
certain Chinese cities seem to believe in the theory of cost while ignoring that of
rights or benefi ts in an apparent attempt to favor vested interests. There are also
think tank members who, despite their supposedly interest-neutral nature, employ
biased methods and draw prejudiced conclusions. Nonetheless, such incomplete
urbanization, which can be compared to catching fi sh by means of draining the pond
entirely, is doomed to be unsustainable and is certainly unlikely to make the Chinese
Dream come true.
The provision of equal opportunities and basic support in the process of urban-
ization in developed countries deserves closer study. Take Chinese people who have
gone to study in the United States for example. After graduation, except for a minor-
ity who stay in the academic or research sectors, they tend to work in private com-
panies or start their own business. It seems clear that there are few diffi culties caused
by the institutional bias evoked above.2 In Japan, the urbanization rate was only
27.8 % in 1945 but increased rapidly to 72.1 % 25 years later, a rate nearly twice
that of China. To provide workers with housing, Japan spent public funds building
public hostels. It was in the early 1960s that Japan launched a program to decentral-
ize human, fi nancial and physical resources from big cities to smaller towns, thereby
facilitating the employment and citizenization of Japanese people in their respective
places of residence.3 In the period between independence and the early 1980s,
Singapore, as one of the four Asian Dragons, became industrialized and urbanized
rapidly. The Housing Development Board (HDB) provided 80 % of Singaporeans
with apartments within only some 20 years. In the 1990s, there were nearly 90 % of
Singaporeans living in buildings provided by the HDB. In the twenty-fi rst century,
the HDB has launched the Studio Apartments (SAs) program for the aging popula-
tion. One-bedroom SAs are 35 or 45 m 2 in size and sold on 30-year leases at SGD
47,800–71,700. 4 With a small territory and high population density, and by adopting
a combination of state monopoly and privatization policies, Singapore has managed
to achieve near-universal coverage of housing assistance while at the same time
securing a fuel for national development in the long term.5
B reaking down the existing distributive pattern of rights and privileges requires
legislation and law enforcement. We are unable to maximize national and social
interests if our cities are at the same time aiming to maximize their own interests
while ignoring those of rural migrant workers. It is similarly impossible to assure
2 The Heilongjiang Morning Post reported on January 5, 2013 that the city of Harbin publicly
recruited cleaners from around China and that 7 of the 29 candidates who had master’s or doctoral
degrees had got the job.
3 Lan Jianzhong: “How did Japan turn farmers into registered city residents”, Reference News,
April 24, 2013, p. 11.
4 Lawrence Chin, 2004. Public Housing Governance in Singapore: Current Issues and Challenges,
Department of Real Estate, National University of Singapore.
5 Wong Tai-chee and Guillot Xavier, 2004. A Roof over Every Head: Singapore’s Housing Policy
between State Monopoly and Privatization. IRASEC-Sampark, p. 256.
Preface: Breaking the Existing Pattern of Rights and Privileges to Accelerate… vii
the fi nancial and social interests of 260 million rural migrant workers only through
the efforts of the 31 migrant workers who are delegates to the National People’s
Congress (NPC).6 Before reform and opening up began, the distributive pattern of
benefi ts in the Chinese society was relatively simple, which was one of urban–rural
dichotomy. After that, the distributive pattern, while remaining in essence dualistic,
i.e., pitting urban against rural areas, features a larger number of and fi ner-grained
categories, including those with either urban or rural h ukou , and those with either
urban or rural hukou that live in metropolitan areas, as well as those who lack of
hukou registered in cities (or towns).
To break through the existing distributive pattern of rights and privileges, we
must fi rst legally clarify and confi rm the social costs and benefi ts of citizenization
so as to let everyone who contributes to China’s industrialization and urbanization,
whether he/she is an old or new citizen, or a rural migrant not yet registered on the
local h ukou system, benefi t from its reform and development. We should know what
the costs and benefi ts are. Second, we should make laws to decentralize social and
economic resources and make them market-oriented. The reasons why Tier 1 cities
and provincial capitals are suffering serious urban problems, such as being overbur-
dened with a great number of rural migrants, primarily include the monopoly of
economic and social resources caused by the centralization of administrative pow-
ers. In China, almost all the best education, medical, cultural, sports and other
resources are centralized in Tier 1 cities and provincial capitals. In contrast there is
a shortage of job opportunities in Tier 3 and 4 cities, where people often fi nd it dif-
fi cult to make a living. Third, and most important, is law enforcement instead of
selective law enforcement. We should say that China already has a rather complete
legal system consisting of the labor law, the compulsory education law, the social
security law and so on. Nonetheless, some cities and decision makers opt for selec-
tive law enforcement or the circumvention of particular laws, making it impossible
to effectively enforce laws. The average salary income at a monopolistic SOE
should never be much higher than the average national income if it is all-people-
owned; proceeds from the sale of reserved land for urban development, if it is state-
owned, can add much to the fund for building houses that ensure the citizenization
of rural migrants. The constitution grants people the right to vote and be voted for,
which should not be denied where rural migrants work and live.
With institutional arrangements that lead to an urban–rural dual structure,
Chinese cities have been receiving direct and indirect benefi ts from rural migrants
since the country began the process of reform and opening up. But at the same time
they have overlooked, or even refused, to give citizenization-relevant benefi ts to
such migrants. This has greatly hindered the process of citizenization while continu-
ously increasing the already high social, economic and environmental costs. Workers
recruited from rural areas before China began the process of reform and opening up,
6 In China, the number of migrant-worker delegates to the NPC increased to 31 for the 12th NPC
from three 5 years ago; they represent 260 million migrant workers. Yao Xueqing: “Thirty-one
migrant-worker delegates to the NPC: they speak for 260 million migrant workers”, People’s
Daily , March 12, 2013.
viii Preface: Breaking the Existing Pattern of Rights and Privileges to Accelerate…
as well as university graduates in the 1980s and the 1990s, typically lived in less
comfortable dormitories and received low wages/salaries. Nonetheless, they had
access to basic security and rights. With regard to the citizenization of rural migrants,
they do not need benefi ts available to the white-collar elite, nor do they expect to
live in luxurious houses. While contributing their labor and wisdom to the host
cities, they need basic housing, education, medical care, political rights, labor ben-
efi ts and equal opportunities. Since the citizenization of rural migrants clearly
makes sense from the social, economic and legal perspectives, it should and can be
implemented. To this end, we need only to break through the existing pattern of
interests and respect the citizenization-relevant rights of rural migrant workers.
Beijing, China Jiahua Pan
Contents
1 Overall Strategy for Promoting the Citizenization
of Rural Migrant Workers ..................................................................... 1
Jiahua Pan
2 Evaluating China’s Cities for Scientifically- Sound
Development ............................................................................................ 47
Jingjing Shan , Zhanyun Wu , and Ya’nan Geng
3 The Evolution of China’s Migrant Worker Policies
for Since 1978 .......................................................................................... 81
Shunjiang Huang
4 The Status of Migrants in Cities and Innovations
in Social Management ............................................................................. 101
Min Du
5 Cost Estimation and Cost Sharing Mechanism
for Citizenization of Rural Migrant Workers ....................................... 129
Jingjing Shan
6 Methods for the Citizenization of Migrant Workers
in Megacities ............................................................................................ 149
Yanting Ni and Yingchang Song
7 Approach to and Suggestions for Further Reform
of the Hukou System ............................................................................... 163
Liejun Wang
8 Encouraging Farmers to Migrate with Asset ....................................... 195
Xueyuan Chen
9 Establishing a Unified Urban-Rural Fair
Employment System ............................................................................... 215
Meng Li and Qimin Peng
ix
