Years ago, I wrote about China’s HuKou systems. I compared that to U.S.’s immigration policy, only applied to China’s own citizens. Several weeks ago, the Economist had an article on the same subject.
What saddened me most is its the bleak outlook. After 50 years, people have got used to and optimized their lives under the system. Now any attempt to reform must deal with pockets of population that will be hurt by the change. Like the complicated US tax laws, for every rules, there is a small group of people who benefit greatly from it and the total population wouldn’t care any less. The sum of those special interest cripples the nation that demands reform, but none can be done without facing violent opposition from a small group.
The linchpin to China’s HuKou reform is land ownership. China’s new property law give farm lands to the collective of farmers. Such ownership is hereditary and non-transferable. The whole village own the arable land together. No one can sell any part of it (in fact, no one can sell it at all). The ownership is subdivided and passed down to the heirs as generations progress. A descendant can live the entire life away and still claim the small piece of land to his name. Imagine the wealth locked in such system, all because of the fear of famine, irrationally remembered from decades ago.
City people talked about the gold content of their HuKou: health care, schooling, retirement benefit, priority university admission, and numerous others. They don’t want their piece of the pie to get smaller. Doesn’t it sound like US citizens not wanting to pay for social welfare for the illegal immigrants? Never mind those people work next door, buy groceries, and pay taxes too.