The hukou system is fascinating- I literally turned to a Chinese coworker to ask about it. He is dealing with visa issues in the US, and explained if he wanted to go live in the Chinese city of his family, he'd have essentially a new set of "visa" issues there!

Never having heard of the hukou system before (wikipedia[1] for anyone in the same boat) I have a hard time understanding the rationale behind it. The only "benefit" I can see is the government having more control over citizen movement and reduced class mobility. I was surprised that people with rural hukou status who had migrated to urban areas were reluctant to change status. I'm curious how it's perceived by the people?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system

They aren’t reluctant to change their status, they simply can’t. Hukou upgrades only come with marriage or divine central government intervention. Even if your ancestors moved to that city a few generations ago, it won’t change your (or your descendants) hukou; ie no jus soli.

Reading about the program that was my initial guess as to how it would work as well so I was surprised when I got to this section[1] of the wikipedia article that seems to say people are deliberately choosing not to convert from rural to urban. The entire section is sourced to an article[2] titled "China's Hukou Puzzle: Why Don't Rural Migrants Want Urban Hukou*"

Interestingly, the asterisk in the title indicates the research was funded in part by the Chinese government and the user who included the paragraph/source in the article has been banned by Wikipedia[3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system#Hukou_conversion_...

[2] [PDF] https://www.geog.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/users/fan/a133...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Backendgaming

Farmers do lose the rights to their land when they are given urban hukou, but that is part of the divine central government intervention I was referring to. It isn’t usually the case that they are migrants, but their land is being “liberated” by a nearby city and their hukou is being changed to urban so that they no longer have rights to that land anyways (they’ll also be given a small apartment, good luck with your new career as a non-farmer!).

This is a bit different from people moving from one place to another, and involves another nuance between urban and rural hukou within the same area.

I did the equivalent for almost 10 years. (Lived in Massachusetts; worked in New Hampshire.) But I owned a house I liked and it didn't make sense to move.

But like, what's a Washingtonian going to say, "These Oregonians are stealing our jobs!"? No way!

So confusing...

We are too busy complaining about Californians stealing our jobs and houses to think much about Oregonians (and I was born in Portland so...).