(Group photo of conference attendees. Credit: ICARDC XIV Organizing Committee)

The 14th International Conference on Agriculture and Rural Development in China (ICARDC XIV) was held in Ningxia University in Yinchuan, Ningxia Province in China from October 21 to 23, 2018.

Wang Xiang made a presentation in the panel “Urbanization and Rural-urban integration” about the latest hukou reforms in Guangdong province. She argues that despite ambitious reform plans to the hukou system, the Chinese government is not abandoning mechanisms that can allocate public resources to different subpopulations and steer internal migration. The urban-versus-rural bifurcation in the hukou system is being replaced by a more refined and tiered system of differentiation that defines what kind of migrants go to what kind of cities. Despite the removal of urban-rural differentiation in the hukou system and the ambitious targets of integrating migrants, China’s citizenship regime appears to retain differentiation rather than move towards unification.

(Credit: author)