Will you leave Beijing to Shanghai?

Every morning you get up, listening to the music on the way to wok, consulting with colleagues at place of work, and shopping after that with friends, getting ready for the dinner; you’ve already been familiar with every street of this city, and you even enjoy the same dialect. In addition, you devote part of your salary to this city’s finance in the form of tax. You have lived in this city for a long time that makes you feel you’ve already integrated into this society. Until you need to buy a house, children need to go to school or join the entry examination to the college…you just find that there is a grate gap between you and the citizen of the city, as you are not the registered permanent residence here. 

Then you complain again and again for the unfair consequence brought by domicile system of China. You claim that you are no difference to the permanent residence here – imposing the same obligation like paying the tax, consuming, charity, and being as a volunteer, but why you’re not qualified to enjoy the same treatment You inquired the relevant office and got the answer that it’s not the right time to release the domicile management, or the city would be over-expanded that will bring extremely inconvenience to the government. 

But in fact, you can clearly experience that the problem of domicile is basically not about management, but concerns about fair. Have you often think of the hereditary system of hierarchy in the old society is very much alike today’s domicile system? Your rural household registration is ‘hereditaried’ from your parents serving as peasants. If you are not able to change it to the city household registration, your next generation will inherit this status, which means your status would not change with your intelligence and hard work but the property of the household register. 

In the early days of the founding of this country, the original intention of China’s household registration system was did to limit the flow of population in order to a convenient management. However, the migrating of people has already been a general tendency of this society, for example, there are 150 million migrant workers move from rural districts to cities every year. But it neitherr brought any trouble to the government nor lead to social chaos. So the key point of household registration system, as pointed out by Takung Newspaper, was not the free flow of the population, but the ‘equal right’. 

Fair and Freedom are soul of the market economy. Although the freedom of migration is out of question, the shadow of fairness has always lingered in this society. Until the reform scheme of domicile system of Shanghai has been coming out, it broke through the shadow with a crack. It is reported in the Time Weekly that Shanghai would take the lead in becoming flexible on household registration and it will first carry out in Pudong New District that allowing temporary residence permit holder transfer to the formal household registration. So finally, after so many years’ appealing on the reforming of this system without any response, Shanghai becomes the first to step forward to turn to the fairness.

Social justice is sometimes forced by extremely urgent. Given that the development of economic needs more and more talented person and the competition becomes much intense than before, plus the value of hi-tech products are set to soar because of the financial crisis, only release the household registration system, people with ability can be kept and attract more intelligent person from other parts of the country, in order to keep the economy and society developing continually. And this reform does give a stable expectation to talented foreigners in Shanghai. 

Won’t you feel rejoice if you just have lived in Pudong New District for a long time? Will you see a piece of hope if you stay in Shanghai? However, what if you live in Beijing as mentioned in the first part of this article? Will you leave Beijing to Shanghai? Furthermore, will Shanghai worry that a great many of people pour into this city after setting such a precedent?