Posts tagged ‘China’

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30/12/2012

* Wealth gap to be cut, Han Changfu tells Central Rural Work Conference

The new regime seems to be determined to make substantial changes for the better.  This is but one of several declared changes in policy or practice since Xi and LI took over in mid-November.

SCMP: “Beijing will look to boost farmers’ income, protect their land rights and seek more equitable treatment for migrant workers in cities, reports from the annual rural work conference said yesterday.

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Agriculture Minister Han Changfu told the two-day Central Rural Work Conference that the government would aim to narrow the gap between rural and urban residents by keeping the annual rate of income growth in the countryside at least 7.5 per cent, according to the People’s Daily. He said urban policies should focus on fostering new sustainable agricultural business models to encourage young migrant workers to return home to farm, Xinhua reported.

Han highlighted a critical “lack of sustainable manpower” in the country’s agriculture sector, with more than 60 per cent of young migrant workers saying they have no plans to return to farming, Caixin reported.

Supporting agricultural development would require maintaining stable land contract management while allowing the orderly transfer of farmers’ land management rights, Han said, according to Xinhua.

The central government would also help expand support to include family farms and specialised co-operatives, he added.

Despite being one of the world’s biggest agricultural producers, China increasingly needs to import food as demand for grain continues to outstrip supply, Han said, according to Caixin. He would not say how much food the country is importing.

The meeting’s participants included academics, businessmen and regulators, and other agriculture sector officials. In addition to ensuring the country’s grain supply, they said steps were needed to ensure farmers can profit during times of rising grain prices and production costs.

The government would also work to better balance urban and rural development, and ensure fair treatment for migrant workers in cities, participants said.”

via Wealth gap to be cut, Han Changfu tells Central Rural Work Conference | South China Morning Post.

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Posted in agriculture, China alert, Economics, Good news, income-wealth gap, Low income, Migrant workers | 4 Comments »

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30/12/2012

* Chinese College Dropout Turns Market Blog Into Pundits’ Favorite

It’s not only US kids who can start successful on-line business from home! As some author commented: Chinese now dream what used to be the American dream – “We can do it”.

Bloomberg: “When Hu Bin started his blog in early 2008, he was a skinny 22-year-old college dropout with a perpetually skeptical look on his face and little doubt he’d soon be a household name.

Chinese College Dropout Turns Market Blog Into Pundits’ Favorite

The previous year, the Shanghai Stock Exchange had been flooded by speculators. For a brief period, it was the second- busiest exchange in the world. It was also beginning a dramatic fall ushered in by the global financial crisis. Hu says he considered the market, considered his audience, and sensed it was time to make his mark.

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Blogger Hu Bin spent his early days predicting the rise of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and now foresees its continuing decline. Photographer: Kevin Lee/Bloomberg

“It really started when Premier Wen Jiabao announced a 4 trillion renminbi rescue plan for the economy,” Hu says. “I knew I just needed to be clever and use this chance of high liquidity in the market to make myself famous.”

Now 26, Hu is China’s most popular online market commentator, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Dec. 24 edition. His blog has gotten more than 400 million visits. His posts are equal parts outlandish and thoughtful, and employ liberal use of bolded, multicolored text and exclamation points.

Hu writes under the name Yerongtian, a character from a real estate-themed Hong Kong soap opera, and has been known to pick fights with other commentators, whom he says suffer from a “lack of emotion.” He has posted at least one picture of cats, and multiple pictures of himself wearing sunglasses to help illustrate his opinions.

‘Eccentric Behavior’

In 2009, the state-run newspaper China Daily listed him, under his alias, among the 10 people in the nation with the most influence on China’s stock market.

“Back then,” Hu says of 2008, “any eccentric behavior would attract people’s attention. If you understood this vital point, you could control people’s minds.”

Hu grew up in Kunming, a southwestern city of 6.4 million that’s far from China’s centers of finance. He learned about the stock market by watching his mother invest in her spare time, he says. She put money into the market in the 1990s, early days for Chinese investment, and lost it all. “Now she invests her money in gold,” Hu says.

He started at Kunming University, intending to study philosophy and Marxism, however quit, thinking he would take up investing himself.

“I was interested in psychology,” he says. “I wanted to know why everyone wanted to bet their future on an uncontrollable thing.”

Commander in Chief

Hu says that in the early days of his blog, his knowledge of the market was thinner than it is now. He has always, however, understood his audience and how to keep it interested.

Hu’s approach to his blog is purposefully bombastic, earning him vocal critics along with followers. In 2009, he got into a spat with another stock commentator, Hou Ning. Hou, at least according to Chinese news reports from the time, holds the record for the longest nickname of any stock commentator in history: Commander in Chief of the Stock Market Army.

The two made a 1 million yuan ($160,500) bet on the future of the Shanghai Composite Index (SHCOMP), with Hu wagering it would reach 4,000 by the end of the year. It didn’t, and Hu didn’t pay, though he got what he wanted out of the rivalry.

“Who would have paid attention to me if I had said 3,000?” he asks. “Everyone already knew it would reach 3,000.” In 2010, he promised to throw himself off one of Shanghai’s tallest buildings if the benchmark Shanghai Composite didn’t reach 5,800 by the end of the year. It didn’t: Hu is still with us.

‘Weather Vane’

Stunts aside, Hu has spent the last four years working through his thinking on the ups and downs of China’s economy in public, slipping thoughtful essays in between bouts of hyperbole.

He spent his early days predicting the rise of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and now foresees its continuing decline. One recent headline: “Doomsday Runs Wild, the Stock Market will likely drop 200 points!!” In another post, he explains that a drop in the market may not be bad. It could give the authorities some space to make reforms without worrying about overheating, and help to attract more foreign investment.

“The stock market is not only an economic weather vane,” he writes. “It is a political weather vane.”

Hu says he is not a financial rabble-rouser. Most laypeople should stay away from investing in individual stocks, he says. The people who read his blog, however, are generally not professionals; retail investors make up the majority of the volume of trading in the Chinese market. There are about 72 million retail investors in China, accounting for three-quarters of the trading on domestic exchanges, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission.”

via Chinese College Dropout Turns Market Blog Into Pundits’ Favorite – Bloomberg.

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22/12/2012

* Yiwu’s purveyors of Christmas tat give China a dose of ho-ho-ho

This article illustrates extremely well our view that the Chinese mindset is practical, materialistic and down-to-earth. And I am talking about the entrepreneurs at Yiwu City and the shopkeepers embracing the Christmas spirit (or at least the Christmas decorations anyway); as well as the average urbanite who wants to celebrate international festivals whatever the origin and raison d’etre.

The Times: “On Thursday the Ling Guo massage parlour, in the central business district of Beijing, suddenly turned festive.

A vendor hangs Christmas decorations in between Santa Claus dolls at her stall ahead of Christmas at a wholesale market in Wuhan, Hubei province, ChinaAn outsized image of Father Christmas beamed from the window, flanked by a manic array of snowmen, reindeer and present-stuffed stockings. The masseuses greeted customers in Santa hats.

It is not a triumph of Western culture, but of raw Chinese salesmanship, entrepreneurial flair and desperation.

Elsewhere, the festive decorations are up, adorning everything from roadside noodle shops to suburban shopping malls. Where China’s Christmas lights used to be restricted to the big hotels and stores in Beijing and Shanghai, the briskest sales are now to small shops in provincial cities.

“We are absolutely focused more on the Chinese market and we are shifting 2,000 plastic Christmas trees a day domestically,” said Liu Qing, from Yanghang Art and Crafts, who has been part of the all-out push by manufacturers to persuade the Chinese to celebrate someone else’s season of goodwill.

“Our biggest buyers are now from Shandong and Chongqing, which is so different from a couple of years ago,” Mr Liu said. “Chinese people’s living standards have improved so much, so people start going after something more spiritual. Christmas is a lively holiday. The younger generations like it.”

For a growing number of Chinese businesses making Christmas-related goods, domestic sales now represent their single biggest — and often fastest-growing — market. It is an unexpected development in a country that does not celebrate Christmas. Without it, though, hundreds of factories would be driven to bankruptcy because, despite strong sales, Santa’s Chinese elves are working on tiny margins.

The key to the tinsel-strewn, gold-baubled Christmas-ification of China is to be found on the country’s east coast in Yiwu, the acknowledged world hub of yuletide tat — or “ornamental handicrafts” as they are described by the city’s factory owners.

It is from these workshops that Yiwu annually exports about £200 million of plastic trees, self-illuminating angel choirs and every other Christmas decoration conceivable. Other manufacturing centres in China also feed into the great £1.3 billion flow of Christmas exports, but none do it with such determination and concentration as Yiwu.

The problem, however, is that Yiwu became too good at its trade at just the wrong moment. In 2010 the city had 400 companies making Christmas products; now there are more than 750, with about 120,000 workers engaged in making Christmas goods.

The huge jump in capacity and competition coincided with a drop of about 25 per cent in what had traditionally been Yiwu’s strongest markets for its tawdry wares, Europe and the United States. The effect on profits has been harsh. This year labour costs in Yiwu have risen by 15 per cent and material prices have risen by about 10 per cent.

Chen Jinlin, from the Yiwu Christmas Products Industry Association, said that some of his members have suffered 20 per cent to 25 per cent declines in orders. “There are nearly twice as many companies as there were two years ago fighting for pieces of a smaller cake,” he said. “We are encouraging manufacturers to develop new products, especially lower-cost ones, to adjust to the new economic reality.”

But the longer-term answer, said Mr Hu, the sales manager of the Youlide Art & Crafts Company, has to be to look for new markets, China being the most convenient and potentially vast. Many of Yiwu’s Christmas goodsmakers have seen the domestic share of their sales rocket to 20 per cent of the total over one or two years.

They have also changed the way that they look at opportunities abroad: a shift of marketing focus has made Brazil the largest export destination for Yiwu’s Christmas goods, accounting for 12 per cent of the total. A similar drive has proved successful in Russia, where sales of Yiwu’s seasonal goods have tripled in the past year.

“About 80 per cent of our products go to South America, so we’ve had to change things to reflect that,” Mr Hu said. “Brazilians like their artificial Christmas trees in a paler shade of green than the Europeans.””

via Yiwu’s purveyors of Christmas tat give China a dose of ho-ho-ho | The Times.

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22/12/2012

* China opens second railway to Kazakhstan

China’s “go west” policy now extends even further west than its most western province! This is good news for Xinjiang, long deemed by its Muslim residents to be looked down upon and mistreated by the majority Han Chinese, for Chinese migrants who would otherwise have headed east into heavily crowded and over-competitive eastern sea board, and for Kazakhstan and countries beyond. A win-win-win situation, indeed.

Xinhua: “A second cross-border railway between China and Kazakhstan opened Saturday.

The railway is composed of a 292-km section in China and the remaining 293-km section in Kazakhstan. They were joined at the Korgas Pass in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Contruction of the Chinese side of the railway cost 6 billion yuan (962 million U.S. dollars), railway officials said.

The rail line is expected to ease the burden of the Alataw trade pass, where the first China-central Asia railway traverses. It handles 15.6 million tonnes of train-laden cargo a year.

Industry observers expect the Korgas pass, which now connects China and Kazakhstan by a railway, a highway, and an oil pipeline, to handle 20 million tonnes of cargo a year by 2020 and 35 million tonnes a year by 2030.

The railway launch followed the meet of Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and his Kazakh counterpart Kairat Kelimbetov in Astana earlier this month, vowing to enhance bilateral cooperation in energy, trade, communication and other fields.

Wang suggested enhancing the China-Kazzkhstan interconnection by the rails and a trans-continental highway that links China with Europe.

China and five central Asian countries have been deepening trade and economic cooperations in recent years. The total trade volume between China and central, west, and south Asian countries increased from 25.4 billion U.S. dollars to more than 370 billion, up about 30 percent annually.

In particular, trade between Xinjiang and five central Asian countries reached a historical high of 16.98 billion U.S. dollars last year, according to the customs figures.

Observers said the railway will also help the border city of Korgas become a key logistics hub with a network of highways, railways and pipelines.

Since 2010, the central government has been redoubling the efforts to build Xinjiang into a regional economic center, eyeing its geological closeness to central Asia and the region’s abundant natural resources including oil, coal and natural gas.”

via China opens second railway to Kazakhstan – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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Posted in China alert, Economics, Ethnic clash, free trade, GeoPolitics, Good news, Infrastructure, Migrant workers, Politics, Trade, Transport | 3 Comments »

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22/12/2012

* Japan’s Abe to send envoy to China to mend ties

Commonsense and geo-politics wins over parochial politics.  Thank goodness.

Reuters: “Japan’s next Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to send senior ruling party member Masahiko Koumura as an envoy to China as early as next month in a bid to repair ties between Asia’s two largest economies, the Nikkei business daily said.

Shinzo Abe, Japan's incoming Prime Minister and the leader of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), attends a meeting at the LDP headquarters in Tokyo December 21, 2012. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

Abe, a hardliner who has questioned claims by China and others that Japan’s army forced woman from occupied territories into prostitution during World War II, wants to bolster relations with his nation’s biggest neighbor after anti-Japanese protests there this year, the paper reported, without saying where it obtained the information.

Komura will carry a letter from Abe for China’s leaders, the Nikkei said. Komura is a former foreign minister who served as Abe’s defense minister during his first administration in 2007. As head of the Japan-China Friendship Paliamentarians’ Union, the lawmaker is known for his strong ties with China.

During campaigning for the general election that returned his Liberal Democratic Party to power after three years, Abe pledged to take a tough line with China in the dispute over islands in the East China Sea islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

A Chinese boycott of Japanese cars, electronic gadgets and other products earlier this year, however, hurt Japanese companies, while violent anti-Japanese protests damaged some businesses.”

via Japan’s Abe to send envoy to China to mend ties: Nikkei | Reuters.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/10/05/diaoyu-islands-dispute-hammers-japanese-car-sales-in-china/

Posted in China alert, Economics, Politics, Territorial dispute | Leave a Comment »

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22/12/2012

* Why all the violence? The argument against guns

So different and yet so similar!

Meanwhile in China: “In one day, two acts of violence: but one ended very differently from the other. Just hours before the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, a stabbing spree took place at an primary school in Chengping, Henan, a small village in central China. The two towns are small enough that they were only catapulted to the world stage after these violent and senseless tragedies.

Students return to school in Chengping, Henan, after the stabbing that took place on December 14. It is a chilling coincidence that young children were targeted in a place where they are supposed to be the safest, in two global incidents that happened within hours of each other. Two acts of violence that had similar settings had very different outcomes.

The shooting in Connecticut had an astounding death toll of 28, of whom 20 were small children. The stabbings in China saw 20 children injured, with 0 deaths. The majority of the students suffered only minor injuries. The stabber in China was subdued soon after the attack by the security guards who had been posted to schools around the country following a spike in the number of stabbing crimes. In Connecticut, it is believed that the shooter took his own life.

In the US, the subject of gun laws took center stage soon after – in China, the discussion became focused on its mental health support system.

The discrepancies between the outcomes of these two incidents point to the fallacies of the mental health care system in both countries, but more so to a culture of violence and a lack of gun control in the US.

To outsiders, the obsession with guns in American culture is difficult to understand. Even amongst the more liberal, guns have held sacred status because of the constitution. To many, the removal of the right to own guns would be akin to revoking the freedom of expression or the right to vote. The ultimate dismissal in American politics is that something is “unconstitutional” – this should give an idea of how strongly Americans believe in their constitutional rights. With the Newtown shootings, however, the tide is shifting.

More and more Americans are demanding a serious dialogue on gun laws. After the Aurora cinema shootings on July 20 this year, six mass shootings have occurred, including the attack on a Sikh Temple that killed 7 people. The mantra of, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” is often repeated, to which I simply point again to the contrasting fatality count of the two tragedies. Although murder is an unavoidable and ugly face of humanity, the place of guns in American society makes it far too easy to accelerate the fatality rate during a violent rampage. Guns were designed solely to kill. To those arguing that outlawing semi-automatic guns would simply drive illegal gun sales, the majority of these massacres occurred when the shooters were able to obtain guns legally. In fact, the proliferation of guns means that these guns often make their way illegally across the borders to Canada and Mexico.

Why make it so easy to kill? Why must the burden of the freedom to own guns be placed on the lives of children?

Doubtless, the two men who committed the crimes were mentally ill. It would be incredibly difficult to pinpoint exactly what was the cause of their actions. In both countries, there should be a stronger support system for mental illness. The culture of violence must also be addressed; there needs to be better education at a younger age for conflict resolution. There is a need to teach our children that there are better and easier paths to take than violence. Children need to be taught about empathy, that other people matter just as much as they do.

There is more in common between the two countries than we think. We are all humans and are heartbroken in times like these. We need to come together instead of using this to turn against each other. We need to put in a serious and concerted effort to find a way to prevent tragedies such as these from happening again.”

via Opinion: Why all the violence? The argument against guns « Meanwhile in China.

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22/12/2012

* TATAY RIVER, Cambodia: China is top dam builder, going where others won’t

Miami Herald: “Up a sweeping jungle valley in a remote corner of Cambodia, Chinese engineers and workers are raising a 100-meter- (330-foot-) high dam over the protests of villagers and activists. Only Chinese companies are willing to tame the Tatay and other rivers of Koh Kong province, one of Southeast Asia’s last great wilderness areas.

It’s a scenario that is hardly unique. China’s giant state enterprises and banks have completed, are working on or are proposing some 300 dams from Algeria to Myanmar.

Poor countries contend the dams are crucial to bringing electricity to tens of millions who live without it and boosting living standards. Environmental activists and other opponents counter that China, the world’s No. 1 dam builder, is willing and able to go where most Western companies, the World Bank and others won’t tread any more because of environmental, social, political or financing concerns.

“China is the one financier able to provide money for projects that don’t meet international standards,” said Ian Baird, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin who has worked in Southeast Asia for decades. “You go to China if you want to have them financed.”

The consequence, critics say, is a rollback to an era of ill-conceived, destructive mega-dams that many thought had passed. The most recent trend is to dam entire rivers with a cascade of barriers, as China’s state-owned Sinohydro has proposed on Colombia’s Magdalene River and the Nam Ou in Laos, where contracts for seven dams have been signed.

Viewed by some in the developing world as essential icons of progress, dams in countries as far apart as Ecuador, Myanmar and Zambia have spearheaded or reinforced China’s rising economic might around the world. They are tied to or put up in tandem with other infrastructure projects and businesses, and power generation equipment ranks as China’s second-largest export earner after electrical machinery and equipment.

In energy-starved Cambodia, trade with China has risen to 19 percent of GDP from 10 percent five years ago, according to an Associated Press analysis of International Monetary Fund data.

The year-old $280 million Kamchay Dam in Cambodia’s Kampot province was the largest ever foreign investment when approved as well as a political flag-carrier for Beijing. It has been hailed by both governments as a “symbol of close Chinese-Cambodian ties.”

Cambodia’s electricity demand grew more than 16 percent a year from 2002 to 2011, with shortfalls largely met through costly oil imports, said Bun Narith, a deputy director general in the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy. Only 14 percent of rural homes have electricity, one of the lowest levels in Southeast Asia.

“We have no choice,” Bun Narith said. “Hydropower is the priority, and the Chinese have the initiative and capability, both financial and technical.”

The 20 hydro dams built, being constructed or under study in Cambodia, the bulk of them by the Chinese, would lift Cambodia out of literal darkness and make it energy self-sufficient, he said. “We should have a win-win policy, a balance between environment and energy. After all, electricity is also a basic human need.””

via TATAY RIVER, Cambodia: China is top dam builder, going where others won’t – World Wires – MiamiHerald.com.

 

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22/12/2012

* Land grabs are main cause of mainland protests, experts say

If the new Chinese leadership is serious about improving the lives of its citizens and removing reasons to distrust the Party, this is one area it should concentrate on rather than reducing banquets and other ostentatious spending by officials and senior soldiers. The former affects people directly, the latter only peripherally.  Though eventually both must change.

SCMP: “Land seizures, pollution and labour disputes have been the three main causes of tens of thousands of mass protests in recent years, according to a top think-tank.

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In its 2013 Social Development Blue Book, released on Tuesday, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said the mainland was experiencing frequent social conflict because “social contradictions were diverse and complex”.

It said there had been more than 100,000 “mass incidents” – the central government’s term for large protests involving more than 100 people – every year in recent years.

Professor Chen Guangjing, editor of this year’s book, said that disputes over land grabs accounted for about half of “mass incidents”, while pollution and labour disputes were responsible for 30 per cent. Other kinds of disputes accounted for the remaining 20 per cent.

“Of the tens of thousands of incidents of rural unrest that occur each year in China, the vast majority of them result from land confiscations and home demolitions for development,” Chen told a news conference in Beijing yesterday.

Late last year, about 1,000 villagers from Wukan, Guangdong, rioted and overthrew corrupt local leaders who had profited from illegal sales of village land.

Chen said environmental concerns were also becoming a main cause of social unrest, as evidenced by a series of grass-roots demonstrations over polluting projects.

More than 20,000 people rallied in Xiamen, Fujian province, in June 2007 to protest against plans to build a chemical plant in the city.

The project was subsequently relocated and the Xiamen backdown sparked similar protests in several mainland cities.

The major cause of labour disputes was salary arrears. There over 120 protests that involved more than 100 workers each in the first eight months of this year.

Chen said courts and labour arbitration tribunals had dealt with 479,000 back-pay cases in the first nine months of this year.

The book says 120 million mainlanders are living under the poverty line – with per capita annual disposable income of less than 2,300 yuan (HK$2,830). The government last year raised the poverty line from the previous level of 1,200 yuan, set in 2008.

Professor Li Peilin, the blue book’s editor-in-chief, said household income growth had lagged far behind gross domestic product growth over the past decade.”

via Land grabs are main cause of mainland protests, experts say | South China Morning Post.

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20/12/2012

* Amid China tensions, Southeast Asia looks to India

ASEAN nations turning to India to counter-balance China’s aggressive position on territorial disputes.

Reuters: “Southeast Asian leaders are expected to lay out a vision for closer cooperation with India on security and the economy at a high-level gathering in New Delhi at a time of tension with China in the potentially oil- and gas-rich South China Sea.

ASEANIndian flagThe meeting is a ceremonial summit to mark 20 years of cooperation with India and will not include detailed negotiations on regional issues, India’s Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid told Reuters.

But ministry officials said the leaders would also produce a statement which is expected to reiterate a commitment to freedom of navigation, a hot issue because of territorial conflicts in the South China Sea.

Some ASEAN countries contest claims by China in the waters, making it the biggest potential flashpoint in the region. The United States has called for calm, but some are also looking to India, the other regional heavyweight, to get involved.

“They want India to play a larger role. Those concerns are only increasing given the uncertain situation that is emerging,” said C. Raja Mohan, a strategic affairs expert at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank.

For India, improved relations with Southeast Asia will give it entry into one of the fastest-growing economic regions in the world and a source of raw materials needed for its own growth.

Poor there are poor transport links between India and the nations to its southeast, and constraints like India’s tiny diplomatic corps – similar in size to New Zealand’s – mean India trails China in relations with the region.

Trade between India and the 10-member ASEAN was up to $80 billion last year compared with $47 billion in 2008. An agreement on free trade in services and investment could be signed at the New Delhi meeting.

But India’s role in the region is dwarfed by that of China, which enjoyed trade worth a record $363 billion with ASEAN countries in 2011 in an already established free trade area.

“What we need is far greater connectivity,” Khurshid said in an interview with Reuters, mentioning roads, railways and flights as areas needing work. He described a 10-year plan to double the number of diplomats to reflect India’s global ambitions.”

via Amid China tensions, Southeast Asia looks to India | Reuters.

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17/12/2012

* Testing time for China’s migrants as they demand access to education

If 1/3 of the population of Beijing consists of migrant workers, then the city authority better watch out. Sooner rather than  later the anger and frustration will erupt into something very violent.  That applies equally to central government unless it reforms the Hukou system that is at least two if not three decades out-of-date.

SCMP: “Dozens of frustrated parents crowded into a Beijing office, surrounding an education official and brandishing copies of the constitution to demand their children be allowed to take an exam.

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Mothers and fathers around the world fight to send their children to the best schools they can, in the hopes of drastically improving their futures.

But China’s migrant families are victims of a decade-old residency system that denies urban incomers equal access to advantages from jobs and healthcare to the right to buy a home or car – and education.

Chinese university admission is based on a single test, the “gaokao”.

Cities such as Beijing that host China’s best universities – and large incomer populations – only allow those with official residency permits, or “hukou”, to take their exam and benefit from preferential quotas for places.

Around a third of the capital’s 20 million population are migrants, but many of their families become split by rules requiring their children to go to their “home” provinces – even if they have never lived there – sometimes for years, to study for and take the test, which varies by location.

Even then, because of the quota system they will have to score higher to win places at top schools.

“Either you let the country share in your education resources or you accept the reality that outsiders are stuck in your education gutter,” said Du Guowang, a 12-year Beijing resident from Inner Mongolia.

He and dozens of parents packed Beijing’s education bureau each week hoping – in vain – it would let their children take next year’s exam. But registration closed last week.

“This will directly affect their studies and their future prospects so of course it’s unfair,” said Xu Zhiyong, a prominent legal activist who has assisted the parents.

Over the past three decades more than 230 million people – four times the entire population of Britain – have moved to China’s cities in a phenomenal mass migration.

The hukou system restrictions date back to 1958, when the government sought, among its many controls, to designate where people should farm in rural areas, and work or live for those in towns.

It has loosened the rules in recent decades to encourage urbanisation, and acknowledges the need to better accommodate newcomers – especially as resentment mounts over China’s widening rural-urban inequality.

At a key gathering of the ruling Communist Party last month, President Hu Jintao urged officials to “accelerate” hukou reform and work to “ensure that all permanent urban residents have access to basic urban public services”.

But bigger cities are less willing to share residency or benefits, fearing doing so would burden their already strained resources and spur a new influx.

Some point to congested roads and overcrowded hospitals to argue that cities cannot handle larger loads.

But critics say the system is discriminatory.

Full reform would need years, but should begin sooner to defuse resentment, said Wang Zhenyu, deputy director of a public policy research centre at China University of Political Science and Law.

“From the basics like education and healthcare to social security to employment to buying a home or car, hukou-based discrimination covers every aspect,” he said. “Your hukou will affect you your entire life.””

via Testing time for China’s migrants as they demand access to education | South China Morning Post.

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