the household registration system and its changes

In the first 35 years of communist history, migration from a small to a big city was hard except for: going to school, getting married, and job assignment. Going from the country to the city was virtually impossible. The work unit and the household registration system made enforcing this policy possible.

The household registration system was established in 1949, initially to facilitate logistical supplies and planning for the cities but, as time went on, together with the work unit, it became an important tool in the socialist state regulated economy.  Just as work units organized people into fixed institutions, so household registration nailed people to fixed places of residency.  And just as the work unit was hierarchically governed (by rural communes, township, county, provincial, municipal, and central leadership), so the households would be classified as residents of rural, township, municipal, and centrally governed cities.  The problem with the system is that one is virtually born into a place of residency where one's household is registered, and, unless one is assigned a job elsewhere, free geographical movement was virtually impossible, especially from the lower to the higher levels of residency (e.g. rural to urban).  While this facilitated socialist regulation of the economy, it smacked of a feudal tradition when people were tied to a certain place without freedom of movement. 

Household registration was maintained through the local Public Security Bureaus (PSB).  Every household must register their newborns at the local PSB in order to receive the ration tickets for the new household member.  Almost all essential commodities were rationed under the Communist system: rice, wheat flour, corn flour, cooking oils, sesame/peanut butter, tofu and other soybean products, sugar, eggs, cloth.  Even if one bought cookies in a grocery store or ate a meal in a restaurant, one would have to pay, in addition to cash, the ration tickets for wheat flour or rice.  When buying clothes in the stores, one would have to pay with both cash and ration tickets for cloth.  All the ration tickets could only be collected from the local PSB where one's household registration file was located.  Therefore the household registration system was implemented on the basis of a socialist regulated economy.

With the beginning of market economy, the rationing system was gradually abolished. Prices of goods were allowed to "float" according to market demand and supply. There was much less incentive for people to stay where they were.

During the economic reform, the so-called "household responsibility system" in the countryside led to the disappearance of the People's Commune in much of China. With the partial revival of the free market, peasants can now sell that part of their produce above the quota collected by the state at the free market.  The growth of incentives led to greater productivity in the countryside, and a surplus of labor. Many of these extra hands flock to the cities in search of jobs, becoming migrant workers.  Unlike the American countryside, the Chinese countryside is distinctly different from the cities. Life is far less comfortable, where some rural regions still do not have electricity, and flush lavatories are not a standard necessity. Salaries are much higher in the cities than in the country, which are chief reasons for rural migrations to the cities.  Difference between inland and coastal regions is also tremendous. So some migration is from inland rural regions to coastal ones.

Today the household registration system still exists but, without the assistance of the rationing system, it is gradually becoming irrelevant to ordinary people's lives.  The legacy of the household registration system, however, is that migrants from other places still are treated differently.  They are easily discriminated against, are more likely to be interrogated by police when they fail to produce a local registration card (implemented after 1985 to quickly allow the police to identify if someone is from the local region or not, as the household registration book is always kept at home except when collecting ration tickets in the past).  Migrants have to pay for residency in the towns/cities where they do not originate from, pay double or triple for their children to go to school in their newly adopted towns/cities, and enjoy no medical benefits from local hospitals as they are not from the local area.