A couple years ago, I took a class called International and Comparative Education. On one occasion, one of the people in the class was telling me about his final paper for the class, which was on, IIRC, improving access to education for internal migrants in China. Apparently, they are shut out of the public education system? I didn’t understand why this would be, and pressed him for more details.
His response was to say, “if you live in Oklahoma, and you move to New York, your children can’t go to school there, right?”. I was kind of shocked that he thought this was the case (he was working on a PhD in education at an American university, after all), and said “of course they can!”. His English was quite poor and his further explanations didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Does anyone know more about this situation? Is this a major problem in China? Keeping kids out of the school system because their parents have moved to another region seems like a bad idea on multiple levels.
He is right. Chinese have a household registration, (hu kou) which they need to present to do more official things, like go to school, get a good job, and so on. If your hu kou is not for the city/area you are in, then you cannot do these official things in that area.
Lots of poor migrant workers flock from countryside to the cities without changing their hu kous (not an easy thing to do), doing menial jobs in factories or on the street where they are tacitly allowed to be. They are not allowed to send their children to regular schools, which is why many of them leave their children behind with grandparents or other relatives.
His example is good. Imagine having to get “New York” citizenship to move to New York from Oklahoma. This changes at the university level, though. It is quite common for students, especially the top students, to go study at a prestigious university far from where they lived. This is one of the big boons of going to a good school in a big city, you get a pass that allows you to keep working there after you graduate, in a nicer job than selling stinky tofu on the street. Lots of people seek to marry people with big city hu kous (especially Beijing) for this reason also.
Also imagine the attitudes that immigration gets in the Southwest USA, and you can understand a little better how the Beijingers see the migrant workers coming into their city. Chinese need the cheap labor that internal migration provides but these restrictions keep the pressure off of the city services.
I think the majority of migrant workers leave their children behind. Remember that child-bearing in China is not something to be taken lightly- you have to be over a certain age, married, etc. or else you and your child will run into no end of problems. Indeed, one of the punishments for violating the one child policy and other childbearing rules is that you will have trouble getting your kid’s registration sorted out and the child will have difficulties accessing social services.
A large portion of my students are these “left behind children” who are sent to live with grandparents or other relatives while their parents work in Guangzhou. I believe there are also some special schools for migrant workers in affected, which may be run to a different standard than the regular city schools.
You can see how sharp the urban-rural and East-West divides are. Rural and urban areas are administered in very different ways, with different taxes, social services, education standards, etc. It’s almost like there are two different systems for two different types of citizens. Not surprisingly, the rural areas lose out. For example, despite having lower incomes, rural residents actually carry a much higher tax burden. This article has some interesting charts on the effects of growth on the urban-rural divide.
There are wide calls to reform the system for a while, most recently with several newspapers publishing editorials to that effect (and being punished for doing so.) There are periodic reforms, but it’s hard to tell what is actual change and what is lip service.
nani nailed most of it. There are however “school’s” that take migrant kids in cities like Shanghai. And there are ways to qualify to join a real Shanghai school.
That said, kids from the countryside are soooooo behind if they try to go to a regular Shanghai government run school. They don’t have the English skills (shanghai pre schoolers all know their ABC’s and most have a foreign English teacher at least 1x per week) and the rest of their academic skills are weak. My nanny had this issue with her son. He went to a sort of migrant workers school. Understandably, the Shnghaiese (substitute any other urban city) want the migrant labor but don’t want the migrants sucking up the social services (paging Tuscon Arizona?) or making the competitive school system worse.
As Even Sven points out the migrant kid schools have differnt academic standards. Think an Appalacian kid going to a “Appalacian homeschool” in NYC type thing.
Please note that there are between 100-300 ***million *** (not a typo that’s up to 300 million) migrant workers in China.
My wife’s cousin is trying to change his hu kou (from somewhere in rural Anhui to Nanjing), and it’s indeed a big pain in the ass. He’s staying in an apartment belonging to my wife’s late mother, and he needs to get permission from my wife and her sister, from the company that owns the apartment (part of the army), and then shell out a bunch of money to register at the local police station in Nanjing (in fees and bribes).
Thanks for your explanations, everyone. This is very interesting. What a mess. How can a theoretically communist government support such an unequal system? They are, I assume, the ones responsible for the “migrant schools”?
Can anyone hazard a guess at the ramifications of millions of children being raised by their grandparents? This is common in Bulgaria too, and for similar reasons (parents have left to go work in Greece, Italy, or Spain) and it always seemed to me that those kids were the worst behaved.
The classic line is “there are so many people in China.” This can gloss over almost any inequality. The story is that because of China’s huge population, they don’t have the luxury of a fairer system and that for the sake of social stability and economic growth it is best to accept things as they are. While China is in this period of growth some people will have to make sacrifices for the well-being of the nation as a whole. When the time is right, the wise and experienced leaders will change the system and everyone can have their cut of the riches. Lots of people buy it, or at least put up with it as long as the economy continues to grow. But there is a lot of rural unrest- there are daily protests all over China over any number of problems.
The impact?
My students just seem very lonely. Their grandparents are from a very different time and most of them have lived through some really traumatic times, so they have a hard time connecting. They often don’t have siblings or nearby children to play with, and at school the burden is crushing, so there is a lot of isolation. My students express a profound sense of respect and duty towards their parents, but also deep sense of loss for the warm and comfortable home life they missed out on. I think for lots of left-behind children, childhood is an emotionally distant and lonely time. In my experience, these things manifest themselves more often as depression and anxiety rather than bad behavior.
most of the migrant schools I know about are privately funded (not government run).
Much of the countryside today have only kids and the elderly. The working migrant men come home for the harvest and maybe planting, and work as migrants the rest of the time.
Very easily. While Marxist and Maoist ideology may continue to permeate Mainland society via Patriotic Education it only forms a paper framework for most decisions. Even the CCP’s much vaunted Harmonious Society is largely an effort driven to a practical end rather than an exercise in ideology.
That said, the Hukou system is (believe it or not) fiercely debated in China among policy makers and academics. I’m involved in urban planning and spent last summer at Fudan University and hukou reform and migrant worker conditions are the themes of the day in these circles. A big argument among some for the maintenance of the existing Hukou system is the inhibiting effects it has on urban slum creation and that if such a system was not in place the cities would grow in an uncontrolled fashion. It is largely an instrument of social control, a relic of an previous era…but a relic that Mainland society has molded and adapted itself around.
I don’t want to hijack this very interesting thread, but I’m wondering what a China “hand” is, as per the title. I saw this expression in another thread as well (there it was actually “old China hand”) and I’m curious to know what it means exactly and where it comes from.
No, it’s a fairly common old (British?) expression referring to people who are “experienced” in all matters China (and can also be used in reference to other Asian areas). It’s usually used in reference to expatriots who liaise between the motherland and China/Asia.
More specifically, I believe it refers (at least in some contexts) to the bunch of American academics and policy wonks who dealt with China in the 30s and 40s, and who had a great deal of blame heaped on them for “losing” China in 1949. See Edgar Snow, Owen Lattimore et. al.
As for the “hukou” thing, it exists in Taiwan but (AFAIK) is no big deal at all to have changed if you’re moving to another city (on what is a relatively small island, after all). But like on the mainland, it is indeed necessary to have household registration in the correct city and district in order to go to a particular school.
Well, can you imagine the consequences if there were no such restrictions on people movements? The inland would basically empty of everyone except the old as those who could moved to the goldrush areas in the east and south. The Chinese system favours control and “harmony” (ie social stability) above all else, including economic growth … the social system would simply collapse.
Would that really happen, though? I mean, there are economic booms all over the world, and people move for economic reasons. A lot of the time, it does cause significant problems, but has a social system ever actually *collapsed *as a result?
OTOH, as I think about it, I expect that even if it didn’t collapse entirely, there would be a period of significant chaos. Considering that China has already been through quite a lot of turmoil in living memory, it’s not surprising that people want to avoid more social problems.
Hmmm. I think I need to learn more about China. I’ve spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe, where the social system did collapse, and is still in pretty bad shape in a lot of places as a result. I can definitely see why the Chinese would want to avoid something like that. Not being an expert on Chinese affairs, it’s difficult for me to figure out how they might do that.
The Geography of Thought is an interesting book that illustrates how different studies show the East Asian and Western people often perceive the world in a different way. It explains a lot of the historical, cultural and linguistic reasons for this. Sometimes it’s claims are a bit out there, but it’s still a worthwhile read.
A good history of China is essential background. A lot of the things in modern time go back thousands of years. I’ve been pretty happy with the Cambridge Illustrated History of China.
China: Fragile Superpower is an opinionated look at Chinese foreign policy, especially it’s relations with Taiwan, Japan and the United States. I think it gives a good explanation of the political role of “face.”
I’m halfway through The Party and so far it is providing some interesting insight into the way the Communist Party, the government and society interact.
For something a little more lightweight, check out China Road, which gives a good look at some of the diversity in the country and a better look at day-to-day life in this time of change.
One of my favorite fiction writers is Chinese-American author Ha Jin, who not only writes beautiful books, but in my opinion has a lot to say about modern China. I’m especially a fan of The Crazed, which blends the personal and the political.
Finally, if you want to hate men forever, read The Good Women of China.
Oh yeah, and Red China Blues, a fascinating book by a Chinese Canadian woman who became one of the few Westerners allowed to study in China during the cultural revolution. She went in as an enthusiastic Marxist, and left confused. Later she returned as a reporter, and has reported on some really sensitive topics. The first half is her experiences during the cultural revolution, the second is a series of essays on different social problems- from cancer villages to bride kidnapping. Her eyewitness account of the Tienanmen Square massacre is simply unbelievable. A great book.
