China: Keeping Track of the Migrant Floaters

Beijing's municipal government announced April 25 that it will issue 600,000 free multifunction identity cards to migrant workers in the city's construction industry in 2007. This is an important scheme that attempts to fulfill multiple objectives, the most important of which is to keep track of the nearly 12 percent of China's population that floats unmonitored through the system as migrant workers, and to size up the amount of money flowing through this gray sub-economy. It is also an attempt to cover a gap in recently announced proposals for eliminating the country's antiquated two-tiered household registration system known as "hukou."