China: Rural Migration and Plugging the Rural-Urban Gap

As China's leaders struggle with the social effects of a widening rural-urban gap, the issue of China's "hukou," or household registration system, has re-entered the spotlight. At a national public security conference March 29, officials from the Ministry of Public Security again called for the elimination of the two-tiered residence registration system, citing positive outcomes of several local and provincial tests of a unified registration during the past few years. But with many of China's largest cities worried about the cost of absorbing migrant laborers, the debate — which has raged since China's economic opening and reform in 1970s — is far from over.