Re:Why is China smashing its tech industry?
by sudosysgen on Monday August 02, 2021 @06:00PM
(#28043250)
The Hukou system is not designed to punish rural people.
It exists fundamentally to reduce rent-seeking, which is why it exists in some form or another in every economy where there is strong government control of housing. If you remove the Hukou system, everyone will flood to the cities, and you will have overpopulation. You can also liberalize housing, in which case people will pay around 30% of their income in rent which the CCP think is not economically productive. This happened in Beijing and Xi has been floating the idea of literally building another city and moving industries there to reduce rental pressures.
Or you limit migration into the cities to the speed of new constructions, which enables you to set a low rent and, according to the CCP, have better economic outcomes. You limit migration by disincentivizing people who move to the cities without following the quota, hence the Hukou system.
As far as incentivizing Han migration, I can't speak to recent efforts, but for a long time Han migration was incentivized because, well, there weren't much people in Xinjiang and there were a lot of resources and a border with the now-hostile USSR that needed to be exploited. So the CCP under Mao did everything they could to get as many people into Xinjiang. That included allowing Uyghurs to have 3 times as many children as the Han. But otherwise if you need more people into Xinjiang they're not going to be Uyghurs because, well, they're already in Xinjiang.
It exists fundamentally to reduce rent-seeking, which is why it exists in some form or another in every economy where there is strong government control of housing. If you remove the Hukou system, everyone will flood to the cities, and you will have overpopulation. You can also liberalize housing, in which case people will pay around 30% of their income in rent which the CCP think is not economically productive. This happened in Beijing and Xi has been floating the idea of literally building another city and moving industries there to reduce rental pressures.
Or you limit migration into the cities to the speed of new constructions, which enables you to set a low rent and, according to the CCP, have better economic outcomes. You limit migration by disincentivizing people who move to the cities without following the quota, hence the Hukou system.
As far as incentivizing Han migration, I can't speak to recent efforts, but for a long time Han migration was incentivized because, well, there weren't much people in Xinjiang and there were a lot of resources and a border with the now-hostile USSR that needed to be exploited. So the CCP under Mao did everything they could to get as many people into Xinjiang. That included allowing Uyghurs to have 3 times as many children as the Han. But otherwise if you need more people into Xinjiang they're not going to be Uyghurs because, well, they're already in Xinjiang.