北京户口来啦！你准备好了吗？

20160815ou 锵锵三人行 今日话题： 北京积分落户政策出台 落户细则出台 2017年起实施 LW: Now there’s been reform in Beijing’s hukou system. Now a lot of people might not quite be aware what the hukou system is, maybe you can walk us through it. WY: It’s a government record of household registration. It’s required by law in China. It mainly has detailed information about one person including you name, parents, spouse, date of birth, marriages, divorces and all of the members of the family. This is like a household registration. LW: You You if I’m getting right, you have to be in Beijing. If you’re a working professional how long do you have to be in Beijing usually? WY: You have to be paying social security in the city for at least seven consecutive years in the city. Which means you have to stay in the city for at least seven years. LW: Why does this system exist? QU: For our listeners especially those outside of China might not be familiar with such a system. Previously it was for the purpose of maintaining social order; it was kind of like an obsession for ancient China, maintaining social order. It’s a legacy of that time. Now that [we have] market economy if there is a chance that you will work somewhere, [it is likely] that you would live there. But China has very specific conditions. You have mega cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where the populations are about 24 million more or less. That’s the size of some countries, for example Australia, WY: Talking about population size, Beijing has a population of about 20 million, that’s about 2.6 times that of London. There is a pressure of the population size, and at the same time the local governments are struggling to maintain a balance between, the well-being of the citizens and the population size. LW: What about other major cities in China, do they implement it in the same way or are their wrinkles to the way they implement the system? QU: You can divide the rest of the country into two groups. The first group actually introduced a similar system earlier than Beijing; Shanghai in 1912 and Shenzhen and Guangzhou too. Other cities, provincial cities or so-called second tier cities and even third tier smaller cities there is no such a system; its easier for them to handle. There is a policy for these cities that as long as you live there you get it immediately, so there is not attachment. Usually the problem for those cities is that they are not able to provide those precious life opportunities. That’s why you see increasing pressure on these so-called mega cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. These places provide precious educational opportunities for their kids and also excellent public services. If you take a long term point of view, I think it’s really the result of the imbalanced development between the Eastern coastal areas and the inland and Western part of China and between urban areas and the countryside.