• Réforme du Hukou à Chongqing, le nouveau maire dans les pas de Bo Xilai
    Chongqing Mayor Says Rural Land Reform Pilot Has Been Just the Ticket

    The southwestern city of Chongqing has taken a big step toward reforming its system of household registration, known as hukou, by granting urbanites and people living in rural areas the same access to social welfare and public services, the government announced in early September.
    The city also promised it would make it easier for farmers to settle in urban area, abolishing some rules that have been blamed for hindering free movement across regions.
    However, those moves were just the latest efforts Chongqing has made in the hopes of boosting its growth as the country rapidly urbanizes. The city’s government was the first in the country to adopt “land tickets,” an experiment that allowed farmers to sell usage rights for idle farmland as long as the authorities gave their permission. The four-year-old program has seen a total of 10,000 hectares of rural land turned over for industrial or commercial development.
    Chongqing, which is home to nearly 29 million people and is a major source of migrant workers, has become a rare economic and manufacturing hub in China’s vast, underdeveloped west. Over the past few years, the city has served as inland China’s reform testing ground and gotten attention for its continuous efforts to make progress in land management and the hukou system, which gives holders the rights to a range of public services, from health care to schooling.
    “Chongqing is enjoying a bonus from its reforms of the hukou system,” said mayor Huang Qifan, a major backer of the city’s reforms and its mayor since January 2010.

    #Chine, #Agriculture #Hukou

  • Beijing’s migrant children forced out of the city - FT.com

    The battle faced by migrants for a basic education in Beijing and other major urban centres shows how China is struggling to accommodate the millions flowing to its cities despite a national policy of stimulating urbanisation. “His father could move with him but then what about me? I would still be far from the child,” Ms Yang says, her voice cracking.
    About 40 per cent of the primary schoolchildren in Beijing lack a city hukou , the official household residency permit that grants access to social services, including education, healthcare and the right to buy homes. Nonetheless, in recent years they have been permitted to attend primary school in the city, a concession that has allowed many migrant couples to keep young children by their side. This school year alone, 470,800 non-Beijing hukou — or migrant — students attended primary and middle school in Beijing.

    #Chine, #Migrants, #Hukou