Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T11:46:05.527Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

China's Missing Children: Political Barriers to Citizenship through the Household Registration System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2018

Samantha A. Vortherms
Samantha A. Vortherms*
Affiliation:
Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Stanford University; University of California, Irvine. Email: s.vortherms@uci.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Approximately 13 million Chinese lack hukou, the formal household registration. This prevents them from claiming full citizenship rights, including social welfare, formal identity documents and employment in the state sector. The government blames birth planning policies for the unregistered population, but this explanation ignores the role of internal migration. Because citizenship rights are locally determined and the hukou system is locally managed, migrants face significant barriers to registering their children. This article systematically analyses the political determinants of the unregistered population nationwide. Based on a logit analysis of a sample of 2.5 million children from the 2000 census, I find that children born in violation of the one-child policy do have lower rates of registration and that children born to migrant mothers are four times more likely to be unregistered than registered. Continuing government focus on the effect of birth planning ignores the more fundamental institutional barriers inherent in the hukou system.

摘要

中国人口中大约有 1300 万人没有户口，属于户籍制度外人口。户口的缺失意味着权利的缺失。户籍制度外人口无法享受社会福利，无法申办身份证， 也不能在国有部门就业。政府官方对此的解释是违反计划生育政策是户口缺失的首要原因，但是这一解释忽略了流动人口因素的影响。由于公民权利以及户口制度是由当地政府管理， 外来流动人口往往不能给子女在当地上户口。本文对户口缺失的政治决定因素进行了系统的分析研究。根据对 2000 年人口普查中 250 万儿童的样本进行 logit 分析，本文作者发现违计划生育政策的超生儿童的户口登记率偏低。在流动人口儿童中，没有户口儿童是有户口儿童的四倍。在户口缺失这一问题上，政府仅仅对计划生育政策的影响加以关注，而忽略了户口制度本身所固有的制度性障碍。

Keywords

unregistered populationhousehold registration systemfloating populationbirth planning policyChina黑户户籍制度流动人口生育计划政策
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 238 , June 2019 , pp. 309 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banister, Judith. 2004. “Shortage of girls in China today.” Journal of Population Research 21(1), 19–45.Google Scholar
Bongaarts, John, and Greenhalgh, Susan. 1985. “An alternative to the one-child policy in China.” Population and Development Review 11(4), 585–617.Google Scholar
Cai, Yong. 2010. “China's below-replacement fertility: government policy or socioeconomic development?” Population and Development Review 36(3), 419–440.Google Scholar
Cai, Yong. 2017. “Missing girls or hidden girls? A comment on Shi and Kennedy's ‘Delayed registration and identifying the “missing girls” in China’.” The China Quarterly 231, 797–803.Google Scholar
Chan, Jenny, and Selden, Mark. 2014. “China's rural migrant workers, the state, and labor politics.” Critical Asian Studies 46(4), 599–620.Google Scholar
Chan, Kam Wing. 2009. “The Chinese hukou system at 50.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 50(2), 197–221.Google Scholar
Chan, Kam Wing. 2010. “A China paradox: migrant labor shortage amidst rural labor supply abundance.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 51(4), 513–530.Google Scholar
Chan, Kam Wing, and Buckingham, Will. 2008. “Is China abolishing the hukou system?” The China Quarterly 195, 582–606.Google Scholar
Chan, Kam Wing, and Wang, Man. 2008. “Remapping China's regional inequalities, 1990–2006: a new assessment of de facto and de jure populaiton data.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 49(1), 21–56.Google Scholar
Chan, Kam Wing, and Zhang, Li. 1999. “The hukou system and rural–urban migration in China: processes and changes.” The China Quarterly 160, 818–855.Google Scholar
Cheng, Tiejun, and Selden, Mark. 1994. “The origins and social consequences of China's hukou system.” The China Quarterly 139, 644–668.Google Scholar
Ebenstein, Avraham. 2010. “The ‘missing girls’ of China and the unintended consequences of the one child policy.” Journal of Human Resources 45(1), 87–115.Google Scholar
Fan, Chuncui Velma, Hall, Peter V. and Wall, Geoffrey. 2009. “Migration, hukou status, and labor-market segmentation: the case of high-tech development in Dalian.” Environment and Planning A 41(7), 1647–66.Google Scholar
Feeney, Griffith, and Yuan, Jianhua. 1994. “Below replacement fertility in China? A close look at recent evidence.” Population Studies 48(3), 381–394.Google Scholar
Feng, Wang, Cai, Yong and Gu, Baochang. 2012. “Population, policy and politics: how will history judge China's one-child policy?” Population and Development Review 38(S), 115–129.Google Scholar
Goodkind, Daniel. 2011. “Child underreporting, fertility, and sex ratio imbalance in China.” Demography 48(1), 291–316.Google Scholar
Greenhalgh, Susan. 1990. “The evolution of the one-child policy in Shaanxi, 1979–88.” The China Quarterly 122, 191–229.Google Scholar
Greenhalgh, Susan. 2003. “Planned births, unplanned persons: ‘population’ in the making of Chinese modernity.” American Ethnologist 30(2), 196–215.Google Scholar
Gu, Baochang, Wang, Feng, Guo, Zhigang and Zhang, Erli. 2007. “China's local and national fertility policies at the end of the twentieth century.” Population and Development Review 33(1), 129–147.Google Scholar
Ho, Elaine Lynn-Ee. 2011. “Caught between two worlds: mainland Chinese return migration, hukou considerations and the citizenship dilemma.” Citizenship Studies 15(6–7), 643–658.Google Scholar
Jacka, Tamara, and Gaetano, Arianne M.. 2004. “Focusing on migrant women.” In Jacka, Tamara and Gaetano, Arianne M. (eds.), On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China. New York: Columbia University Press, 1–38.Google Scholar
Jian, Zhaobao, and Tian, Wenhua. 2010. “Loneliness of left-behind children: a cross-sectional survey in a sample of rural China.” Child: Care, Health, and Development 36(6), 812–17.Google Scholar
Johnson, Kay Ann. 2016. China's Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Li, Jiali. 1995. “China's one-child policy: how and how well has it worked? A case study of Hebei province, 1979–1988.” Population and Development Review 21(3), 563–585.Google Scholar
Li, Jiali, and Cooney, Rosemary Santana. 1993. “Son preference and the one child policy in China: 1979–1988.” Population Research and Policy Review 12, 277–296.Google Scholar
Li, Shuzhuo, Zhang, Yexia and Feldman, Marcus W.. 2010. “Birth registration in China: practices, problems and policies.” Population Research and Policy Review 29(3), 297–317.Google Scholar
Liang, Zai, and White, Michael J.. 1996. “Internal migration in China, 1950–1988.” Demography 33(3), 375–384.Google Scholar
Loh, Charis, and Remick, Elizabeth J.. 2015. “China's skewed sex ratio and the one-child policy.” The China Quarterly 222, 295–319.Google Scholar
Merli, M. Giovanna. 1998. “Underreporting of births and infant deaths in rural China: evidence from field research in one county of northern China.” The China Quarterly 155, 637–655.Google Scholar
Merli, M. Giovanna, and Raftery, Adrian E.. 2000. “Are births underreported in rural China? Manipulation of statistical records in response to China's population policies.” Demography 37(1), 109–126.Google Scholar
Murphy, Rachel. 2003. “Fertility and distorted sex ratios in a rural Chinese county: culture, state, and policy.” Population and Development Review 29(4), 595–626.Google Scholar
National Bureau of Statistics. 2008. “2008 nian nongmingong jiance diaocha baogao” (2008 report on the survey of migrant workers).Google Scholar
National Bureau of Statistics. 2017. “2016 nian nongmingong jiance diaocha baogao” (2016 report on the survey of migrant workers). http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/201504/t20150429_797821.html. Accessed 17 May 2017.Google Scholar
National People's Congress. 1985. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo jumin shenfen zheng tiaoli (People's Republic of China Resident Identity Card Regulation).Google Scholar
Qin, Xuezheng, Wang, Tianyu and Zhuang, Castiel Chen. 2014. “Intergenerational transfer of human capital and its impact on income mobility: evidence from China.” China Economic Review 38, 306–321.Google Scholar
Saith, Ashwani. 1981. “Economic incentives for the one-child family in rural China.” The China Quarterly 87, 492–500.Google Scholar
Shi, Yaojiang, and Kennedy, John James. 2016. “Delayed registraion and identifying the ‘missing girls’ in China.” The China Quarterly 288, 1018–38.Google Scholar
Short, Susan E., and Zhai, Fengying. 1998. “Looking locally at China's one-child policy.” Studies in Family Planning 29(4), 373–387.Google Scholar
Solinger, Dorothy J. 1999a. “Citizenship issues in China's internal migration: comparisons with Germany and Japan.” Political Science Quarterly 114(3), 455–478.Google Scholar
Solinger, Dorothy J. 1999b. Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
State Council. 2016. “Guanyu jiejue wu hukou dengji hukou wenti de yijian” (Notice on resolving problems of black hukous registering for hukou).Google Scholar
State Council and Public Security Bureau. 1998. “Guanyu jiejue dangqian hukou guanli gongzuo zhong jige tuchu wenti de yijian de tongzhi” (Notice on resolving several outstanding issues in the hukou management system.)Google Scholar
Tan, Jing. 2014. “Further development of urbanization and the policy research on the rural migrant workers granted urban citizenship.” In Yuan, Zhigang (eds.), Economic Transition in China: Long-run Growth and Short-run Fluctuations. Singapore: World Scientific, 463–499.Google Scholar
UNICEF. 2010. “Children affected by migration.” In Children in China: An Atlas of Social Indicators, http://www.unicefchina.org/en/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=59&id=100, 109–111. Accessed 5 July 2017.Google Scholar
UNICEF. 2014. “Children affected by migration.” In Children in China: An Atlas of Social Indicators: An Update, http://www.unicef.cn/en/uploadfile/2015/0114/20150114094309619.pdf. Accessed 5 July 2017.Google Scholar
Vortherms, Samantha A. 2015. “Localized citizenships: household registration as an internal citizenship institution.” In Guo, Zhonghua and Guo, Sujian (eds.), Theorizing Chinese Citizenship. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, Rowman and Littlefield, 85–104.Google Scholar
Vortherms, Samantha A. 2017. “Between the Center and the People: Localized Citizenship in China.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison.Google Scholar
Wang, Fei-Ling. 2005. Organizing through Division and Exclusion: China's Hukou System. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ye, Jingzhong, and Lu, Pan. 2011. “Differentiated childhoods: impacts of rural labor migration on left-behind children in China.” Journal of Peasant Studies 38(2), 355–377.Google Scholar
Zhang, Guangyu, and Zhao, Zhongwei. 2006. “Reexamining China's fertility puzzle: data collection and quality over the last two decades.” Population and Development Review 32(2), 293–321.Google Scholar
Zhang, Kangqing. 1998. “Some findings from the 1993 survey of Shanghai's floating population.” In Bakken, Børge (eds.), Migration in China. Copenhagen: Nordic Instititute of Asian Studies, 67–106.Google Scholar
Zheng, Chunyan. 2016. “Qieshi baozhang ba meige gongmin yifa dengji hukou” (Effective protection of every citizen registering for household registration status). Zhongguo zhengfu wang, http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2016-01/15/content_5033214.htm. Accessed 7 April 2016.Google Scholar
Zuo, Cai (Vera). 2015. “Promoting city leaders: the structure of policial incentives in China.” The China Quarterly 224, 1–30.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Vortherms supplementary material

Appendix

Download Vortherms supplementary material(File)
File 20.7 KB