The rising value of a rural household registration: hukou reform is far from over
Xinhua News Agency reporters recently found in surveys across several provinces that after the comprehensive pilot program for new-type urbanization was launched, most pilot small and medium-sized cities had fully opened up urban settlement for farmers, but in the face of a "zero threshold," farmers' willingness to settle in cities was generally not high. One county town had only just over 200 people convert from agricultural to non-agricultural status in 2015. As the "value" of a rural hukou gradually rises, a considerable number of farmers are willing to buy homes, work and live in cities, but choose to leave their hukou in the countryside. The urbanization rate of the registered population in pilot cities is generally lower than expected.
Because the "value" of a rural hukou has risen, people with agricultural household registration giving up the opportunity to settle in cities is no longer news in some developed areas. For example, data from Zhejiang A&F University show that in 2010 fewer than 20% of new students transferred their hukou to the school. As a provincial university, the vast majority of its students come from within the province. Students surveyed generally said they were unwilling to give up the various preferential policies attached to a farmer's hukou. Today, even in relatively less developed areas, because a rural hukou carries various added benefits such as homestead land and contracted land, locals are not very enthusiastic about "converting from agricultural to non-agricultural" status.
It should be pointed out that these villagers who are unwilling to give up their rural hukou have not given up urban life. Whether they are rural students who got into university or villagers who have the chance to settle with a "zero threshold," many of them work and live in the city and can also enjoy the city's education, basic public health services and public cultural services. Although in terms of hukou status they do not count as "urbanized," in substance they are already city people.
On the other hand, some "farmers" who obtained urban hukou by getting into university or through veteran resettlement after military service now hope to return to the embrace of the "countryside." Of course, this does not mean they are willing to go back to the village to farm; rather, they hope to obtain the benefits of the place where they were born and grew up. However, current hukou policy does not provide space for "non-agricultural to agricultural" conversion. For an urban resident to become a farmer is far more difficult than for a farmer to become a city person.
Whatever the reason they gave up their rural hukou in earlier years, those who now want to return to the "countryside" may feel it is unfair that merely because of a hukou card, childhood playmates who stayed in the village can obtain homestead land and even dividends from the village's various income streams, while those who left can no longer enjoy them; and those who merely have their hukou in the village while they themselves have long lived in the city and no longer make direct contributions to rural development can continue to enjoy all kinds of village benefits, which also seems rather unreasonable.
If "urban-rural integration" is regarded as the goal of hukou reform, then whether the urban hukou has high "value" or the rural hukou has high "value" is not a sign of successful hukou reform. The hukou problem is deeply entangled, not because of hukou policy itself, but because of the various interests attached to hukou. In the past, everyone took pride in being a city person, because having urban resident status came with too many rights and benefits that farmers could not enjoy. Now that a village hukou is "worth something," while it certainly shows the development the countryside has achieved, it is equally a manifestation of the urban-rural dual structure.
A person's identity should directly reflect his or her actual situation, not a few lines of text in a hukou booklet. When farmers migrate to the city, they naturally become city people; similarly, city people also have the right to obtain agricultural means of production. It is no longer news that university students go to the countryside to engage in agricultural production, and some city people also have the desire to live in the countryside. Such "new farmers" may become more and more numerous. The advanced ideas and technology they bring to the countryside will become a powerful driving force for the modernization of rural areas and agriculture. Compared with those who would rather let land lie fallow and farmhouses sit empty while keeping a rural hukou, they are more qualified to be "farmers."
In traditional thinking, the countryside and agriculture are almost synonymous with backward productivity, and escaping the countryside seems to be the correct and only choice, and in practice it has also become an irreversible act. In fact, the countryside is not necessarily backward, and the city is not necessarily so advanced; only by stubbornly clinging to the theory that the countryside is backward will the gap between rural and urban areas grow ever larger. The same is true of hukou reform. In the future, we must see not only farmers' demand to enjoy urban life, but also city people's demand to engage in agricultural production and live in the countryside; on this basis, decoupling hukou from interests and linking it to actual identity is the ultimate goal of hukou reform and urban-rural integration.