Scholar notes progress in hukou reform

Boosting internal consumption shows China has eyes on post-COVID policies

As the two sessions continue, China scholar Jon Taylor said the meetings signify that the nation is already looking to the future regarding policy initiatives in the post-COVID world.

The professor and chairman of the political science and geography department at the University of Texas in San Antonio said that one recent change in China had especially caught his eye, and this was that the pandemic might have helped accelerate the reform of household registration in second-, third- and fourth-tier cities.

Created in the 1950s, the household registration system, or hukou in Chinese, links places of residency to benefits and services received. With large numbers of migrant workers moving from rural areas to cities, the country has been trying to reform the system for two decades.