Study on the Rural Migrant Workers’ Willingness to Have Urban Hukou and the Choice of Urbanization Path of China in Recent Years

ZHANG Yi

Professor of Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Beijing
Abstract: Based on the empirically analysis of the data from a nationwide survey in 2010 in China, the study found: (1) The overwhelming majority of rural migrant workers in China were not willing to convert

their rural household registration (nongye hukou) to an urban or non-rural registration (fei nong hukou). If they were required to return the rural land contract rights as precondition, only 10 per cent were willing to be urban citizens. (2) For the small proportion of migrant workers who were willing to convert their rural household registration to urban household registration, ‘obtaining access to better education and more opportunities for the continuation of education for their children’ is the major incentive. (3) The primary reason for retaining a rural hukou, on the other hand, is to keep their rural contract land. (4) Finally, there is no significant difference between the rural migrant workers who were born before 1980 and those after 1980, in term of the attitude toward converting rural hukou to urban hukou. The policy recommendations drew from the findings are as follows: 1) In order to promote the urbanization process, the government should choose the path of ‘urbanization based on the long term residence in the towns and cities’ instead of the path of ‘urbanization based on household registration’. 2) The rural migrant workers should be converted into urban citizens without being forced to give up their contact land. 3) The government should give equal weight in policy making to the migrant workers born before 1980 and those born after 1980.

Therefore, the policy emphasis of deepening the urbanization of China should focus on the ‘equalization of the resource allocation of the public services and social welfare’, while the characteristics of the separation of the household registration system should not be strengthened any longer.

Key words: rural migrant worker, urbanization, in-depth urbanization, willingness to have urban hukou

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