[Analytics] Residence permit points systems widen China’s class divide

In 2014, China’s State Council set out ground-breaking household registration (hukou) system reform policies aimed at ensuring that 60 per cent of the population lives in cities by 2020. Yiming Dong, Charlotte Goodburn specially for the East Asia Forum.

The system no longer separates Chinese citizens into rural and urban categories — as they had been since 1958 — but instead registers them universally as ‘residents’ (jumin). The ‘residence permit’ (juzhuzheng) system for internal migrants is applied nationwide and all cities with a permanent registered population of over 5 million has now introduced ‘points systems’ for converting to local hukou.

Points systems are widely — and controversially — used in governing international migration, but the development of points systems for controlling the migration of citizens within a country is unique to China. The 2015 Interim Regulations on Residence Permits shows that China’s new residence permit points systems assesses the contribution of migrants to the city, their education and employment background, and property ownership. Those with the highest scores become eligible to apply for local hukou.

Through their permits, and depending on their points, migrants have ‘equal rights’ to access state services including children’s education, employment services, health and family planning, culture and sports, legal aid, vehicle registration and vocational examinations.

The most significant stated benefit of the system for migrants is access to schooling — something which has long been a major challenge for migrant children. But a look at how the system works in three of China’s most attractive migrant destinations — Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing — suggests that the reality is very different. Instead of allowing equal education rights, residence permit policies introduce new forms of stratification. Residence permits discriminate not only between migrants and locals, but also between different groups of migrants. This has far-reaching consequences for educational and social inequality, cohesion and intergenerational mobility.

All three cities apply residence permit schemes as a tool to allow higher selectivity in controlling inward migration. Shanghai, for example, has a long-term population limit of 25 million but still needs to attract investment and pay off social insurance deficits. This means residence-permit holders are assessed on educational background, employment, professional titles and tax payments.

Those scoring above 120 points receive privileges, including in education — their children are allocated school places first after local hukou-holders, gaining entry to well-performing, centrally-located schools. Those with lower scores must wait for spaces in lower quality state schools and state-aided private schools on the city outskirts. Those without residence permits have no access to schooling in the city at all.

In Shenzhen — a growing city in greater need of migrant labour — residence permits are less restrictive but follow a similar pattern. Points are given for education, age, social insurance payments, property ownership, professional titles, technical skills and patented inventions. A separate set of points are applied for school enrolment, which prioritises property ownership as well as hukou registration. The best schools are populated by wealthy hukou-holders, with more privileged migrants and less well-off ‘locals’ in the next two tiers. Poorer migrants end up in the worst-performing schools.

Beijing has been typically slow to reform and its residence permit system is less developed, but the city appears to prioritise locals to the greatest degree. Almost all migrants are prevented from entering local high schools and even local hukou-holders who have recently converted their hukou are penalised. This strict system reflects the city’s stringent population target of 23 million and ongoing pressure on resources such as water.

In Beijing and Shenzhen, those without a residence permit — typically those lacking the many identity documents and proof of continuous residence needed for application — are still channelled into low-quality private migrant schools. In Shanghai, even these schools are now off limits as they were incorporated into the state enrolment system in 2013.

Despite the different goals of each city, all three systems allow urban governments to privilege not only locals but also the top strata of migrants. Providing state services to migrants in a newly hierarchical manner rewards those with defined levels of wealth, skills and education — while penalising the poorer and less well-educated. Local prioritisation of population control over social equality is supported by national-level policy that encourages megacities to establish residence permit points schemes to discourage the settlement of migrants deemed undesirable.

This approach is not new. Internationally, points systems for selective immigration and citizenship have done something similar for decades. Yet the explicitly stratified nature of service provision in China, the system’s reach across almost all provinces, and the fact that it is aimed at supposedly equal citizens of one nation, make this a highly unusual case.

Yiming Dong is a Research Associate at the Department of International Development, King’s College London. Charlotte Goodburn is Deputy Director at the Lau China Institute, King’s College London.