Segregation and China’s second-class citizens
Workers from poor rural regions that built the economic ‘miracle’ are still treated with disdain
Segregation is rife in China’s major cities. Migrant workers are starved of basic services under the draconian urban hukou policy or household registration system. Even their children are barred from attending local public schools.
Health care is another controversial issue in the world’s second-largest economy with the ruling Communist Party using workers from impoverished rural regions as cheap labor. Most of them are employed in low-paying manufacturing and construction jobs.
“Existing national wealth has been accumulated through the blood and sweat of several generations over the past 40 years,” Xu Zhangrun, the acclaimed law professor who worked at the prestigious Tsinghua University before being banned because of his outspoken views, said.
“These are fruits that were harvested by the Chinese people, one generation after the other,” Xu, a vocal critic of President Xi Jinping, wrote in his seminar essay Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes in 2018.
Blood and sweat:
- Rural migrants were the raw material that built “China’s Miracle.”
- Now, they are treated like second-class citizens in their own country.
Better services for China’s underclass have been promised for years.
Delve deeper: Most of the 177 million migrants make up a third of China’s urban workforce. Yet that number is more than the combined population of Germany and France.
Between the lines: Under the hukou rule, “access to social welfare in urban areas is tied to a person’s place of birth.” Rural migrants simply fail to qualify even though they created Comrade Xi’s “Chinese Dream” of prosperity.
Big picture: Better public services for China’s underclass have been promised for years. But it appears Beijing has forgotten the “People” in the People’s Republic of China. Now, a new blueprint is being rolled out.
What that means: “[It will] prioritize granting permanent residency to eligible people who move from rural areas. [This would] include making it easier to access local public services,” state-run China Daily reported this month.
The bottom line: Beijing has hinted before that it would end segregation in the country by ditching the oppressive hukou policy. Nothing happened.
China Factor comment: This time the move was endorsed at last month’s Third Plenum, the twice-a-decade summit of the Party’s elite to determine the country’s economic direction. Still, the proposal seems to be long on rhetoric and short on detail.