How Much Has China’s Hukou Reform Achieved Since 2014?

China's emergence as a prominent global manufacturing player is intricately tied to its vast army of internal migrant labor and its strategy of "incomplete urbanization" over the past four decades. The huge pool of low-cost migrant labor has significantly bolstered the competitiveness of Chinese manufactured goods in the international market. Nonetheless, due to their lack of local household registration (hukou), these laborers cannot access various urban social benefits, leading to the separation of tens of millions of migrant families across different areas and giving rise to a host of challenges. In 2014, China inaugurated its New-type Urbanization Plan and undertook measures to reform the hukou system, committing to lower the proportion of the "migrant" population by 2020 and increasing migrant children's enrollment in schools. Drawing from 2020 Census data and recent policy documentation, this presentation offers an initial assessment of the main outcomes stemming from the 2014 plan, discusses the persisting obstacles China confronts in integrating the migrant population and the latest national and local endeavors to reform the hukou system.

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Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Center on Contemporary China (OWNER)