Eric Xu
Although the CCP’s past handling of the hukou system has resulted in significant social and economic disparities between urban and rural areas in contemporary China, I will argue that the gradual liberalization of the system employed by the CCP is preferable to the quick-fix efforts championed by the CCP’s detractors. As the sole ruling party of a rapidly transforming and urbanizing nation, the CCP has had to balance long-held principles of social stability with tremendous economic growth. Quickly reforming the hukou system without any thoughts to the deleterious and chaotic effects that it would have on Chinese society goes against the CCP’s stated principles of achieving a “harmonious society” that minimizes social tensions. From both normative and empirical perspectives, I will argue that piecemeal attempts at hukou reform are the only ones which may be successful in the short and long run. I will also argue that hukou reform cannot be the sole method of alleviating many of the concerns that its advocates have about the state of contemporary China. Because of the intertwined nature of so many of modern China’s social issues, hukou reform is best conducted in a deliberate way so as to keep pace with other social reforms, such as entitlement reform and the transition to a more consumer-based economy. Normatively, hukou reform in China conducted according to the CCP’s current guidelines maintains the consistency of the system, while slowly fixing it in tandem with other contributing factors to social inequalities present in contemporary China. The CCP’s gradual and moderate turn towards greater internal mobility echoes many of the normative arguments made by Joseph Carens: by allowing citizens to increasingly access the rights previously only granted to urban residents with valid hukou passes, the CCP is moving from a formalistic approach to citizenship to a more geographicallydependent one that better tracks presence within a community (Carens 2013). At the same time, the CCP is ensuring that public goods are not being excessively strained by the sudden release of hundreds of millions of migrant workers onto public safety nets, thus preventing those systems from becoming strained beyond capacity. This is in line with open borders advocates’ suggestions that any move towards a regime of internal freedom of mobility may be conducted methodically to mitigate its impacts on existing communities (Ibid, 237). Equal access to the resources currently provided by the hukou system means nothing if the access given is of a significantly poorer quality due to those systems’ economic strains. By gradually assimilating
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