Hukou: A Modern Serfdom in China

“MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712 – 1778; the main drafter of the Polish Constitution of May 3rd, 1791)

It was reported that this week a rare joint editorial of 13 Chinese newspapers was unprecedentedly released for appealing to reform and even further to abolish the Chinese Hukou system. In the news of Chinese newspapers unite to call for reform, the editorial reportedly said: “We believe people are born to freedom and [have] the right to migrate. We jointly release this editorial, asking all representatives of the NPC [National People’s Congress] and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference to make good use of your political power and urge the authorities to launch a reform to abolish the ossified hukou system.”

The Chinese Hukou system nominally is a household permit or residence registration system, but, in realty, it is one of the Chinese social status indicators, soon after it was implemented by the Chinese Communist more than half-century ago. The benefit and the symbol between townspeople and rural people are so different that it is the rural people’s life dream to change their own and their children’s Hukou to townspeople’s. One purpose of Hukou is to target the Chinese peasants for restricting their mobility. One way to change a Chinese peasant’s Hukou generally is to go to college, which is not easy for a peasant before and not reliable now; another way is to join the Chinese PLA and be lucky enough to be promoted to an officer’s rank. An interclass marriage won’t be guaranteed to change the status, for the next generation’s Hukou is set to maternal according to the policy of the Chinese Communist. Thus, Hukou is a kind of bondage on the Chinese peasants chained by the Chinese Communist.

If Hukou were of the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, I would say that Hukou indeed is of the Serfdom with Chinese Characteristics, noting that serf is from Russian крепостной крестьянин, means unfree peasant. If the Russian serfs were held by privates, the modern Chinese serfs are held by the Chinese government. If we regarded that it was progress when Peter the Great (1672 – 1725) ended slavery for serfdom, it is an immoral setback when the Chinese Communist fetters Hukou upon the Chinese peasants; not to mention that it was the Chinese peasants who helped the Chinese Communist grabbed the power. Thus, Hukou in China is not only a kind of oppression to the Chinese peasants, but also a scandal in world history. Now, these 13 Chinese newspapers editors refused to be such scandalum acceptum anymore, they appealed to the Chinese rubber-stamp legislative to reform and even abolish the Hukou system. Will this happen? Probably not. For years the Chinese Communist has devised this Hukou system to be more, not less sophisticated. What is more, the Chinese Communist wants all the Chinese netizens to register on internet in their real names. It is hardly to imagine that Hukou will be abolished by the Chinese Communist, at most a substitute for robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Am I criticizing these 13 Chinese newspapers editors to resort the Chinese legislative for justice? Not at all. It is a very decent expedient in a true republic government. A typical example is in the famous, if not notorious, ruling of the American Supreme Court on the case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford in 1857; and this ruling partially incurred the American Civil War (1861 – 1865). It wrote:

It is not the province of the court to decide upon the justice or injustice, the policy or impolicy, of these laws. The decision of that question belonged to the political or law-making power; to those who formed the sovereignty and framed the Constitution. The duty of the court is, to interpret the instrument they have framed, with the best lights we can obtain on the subject, and to administer it as we find it, according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted.

Yes, law-makers indeed should be responsible on just laws; yet, Henry Thoreau (1817 – 1862) questioned, “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?” The Chinese people must believe in themselves and arouse their own consciences, so the fate of Hukou for the Chinese peasants will be in their own hands.