Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5 Hukou and Non-hukou Migrations in ...courses.washington.edu/chinageo/CLY-IJPG99.pdf · hukou migrants. They are most likely to end up in the bottom rungs of

Hukou and Non-hukouMigrations in China:Comparisons and ContrastsKam Wing Chan,1* Ta Liu1 and Yunyan Yang2

1Department of Geography, University of Washington, Seattle, USA2Zhongnan University of Finance and Economics, China

ABSTRACT

This paper uses China's 1990 Census 1%microdata and studies interprovincialmigration with reference to a core Chinesesocioeconomic institution, the householdregistration (hukou) system.We ®rst comparedthe socioeconomic characteristics andgeographical patterns of long-distance hukouand non-hukou migratory ¯ows, anddeveloped a framework of dual migrationcircuits. With this framework, we used astatistical model to evaluate migration rates inrelation to both origin and destinationvariables. It was found that these two types ofmigrants shared some general demographiccharacteristics, but displayed substantialsocioeconomic differences. Hukou migrantstended to originate in urban areas, had anextremely high share of the college-educatedand were employed in more skilled jobs, whilenon-hukou migrants were mostly from ruralareas with much lower education attainment.Hukou labour migrants tended to movethrough government and formal channels,while non-hukoumigrants relied on their own,often informal, sources for jobs. We used a setof place-to-place migration models to assessthe differential effect of the same variables ondifferent types of migration. While hukou andnon-hukou migration (including rural labourmigration) were, as expected, deterred bydistance and moved mostly to moreeconomically developed coastal provinces, the

migration mechanisms and degree of theimpact were not the same. Non-hukoumigration rates were tied positively to themigration stock, a process consistent with anetworked migration hypothesis, while hukoumigration rates were not. Rural labourmigrants moved away from provinces of highpopulation pressure to those with morefavourable ratios of land per labourer, in linewith neoclassical predictions. Hukoumigration moved in the opposite direction,re¯ecting a different set of factors at work. Ouranalysis indicates that the hukou systemremained a relatively powerful institution instructuring migration in the 1980s. The studyalso illustrates the usefulness and limitationsof applying existing migration models in adifferent sociopolitical context. Copyright #1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 16 March 1999; Revised 29 July 1999; Accepted 20August 1999Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 425±448 (1999)

Keywords: China; dualism; hukou system;labour; migration; model

INTRODUCTION

After decades of being bound to homevillages or assigned to life-long jobs,many Chinese started to taste the new

freedom of mobility in the 1980s. Most notablewas the massive labour exodus from thecountryside, called `mingong chao' or `wavesof rural labour'. The importance of this newphenomenon has been equated to that of therural decollectivisation in the early years of the

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHYInt. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 425±448 (1999)

CCC 1077±3495/99/060425±24 $17.50 Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

* Correspondence to: Kam Wing Chan, Department ofGeography, University of Washington, Box 353550,Seattle, WA 98195-3550 USA. E-mail: [email protected]

post-Mao reform (Gong, 1994), as the increasedpopulation mobility has gradually reshapedsome of the fundamentals on which Chinesesociety and economy were based, and withmany consequences yet to be fully studied andunderstood (Kelliher, 1992; Smith, 1996; Zhou,1996). The study of recent migration in Chinahas also posed special challenges. As remarkedelsewhere, it is like `xiazi moxiang' (the blindfeeling an elephant), especially considering allthe obstacles posed by the diversity of groupsinvolved in migration, the special de®nitionalintricacies and measurement problems, andthe lack of a ready analytical framework(Goldstein and Goldstein, 1987b; Chan, 1994,1999).

The current paper intends to contribute tothe growing body of literature on Chinesemigration by incorporating the hukou (house-hold registration) system, one of the mainChinese socioeconomic institutions, in theanalytical framework, and by explicitly ad-dressing the hukou system and the resultantmigration patterns. The paper takes advantageof the availability of a large migration micro-data set from the 1990 Census. In the nextsection, we will ®rst review the existingmigration literature and tease out the rele-vance to the Chinese case. An explanation ofthe framework developed for analysing theChinese macro-migration patterns is provided.We believe that such a framework enables usto identify the migration patterns and theunderlying factors more effectively. Variouspostulates about migrants' behaviours in rela-tion to the contextual factors of both the originand destination are scrutinised. The conclu-sion summarises the ®ndings and suggests therelevance of our work to the broader literature.This study provides an opportunity to assesswhether Chinese internal migration conformsto some of the general migration behavioursseen elsewhere.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND ANALYTICALFRAMEWORK

Migration within and from China existed inconsiderable numbers in the pre-1978 period,but as a research subject was almost totallyneglected if not forbidden.1 Very little infor-mation on migration was available during this

period (Chan and Yang, 1996). Since economicreform in 1979, a large amount of data havebecome available through various surveys atdifferent spatial scales, including the censuses,national-scale population surveys and morespecialised migration surveys (see Mallee,1996; Chan, 1999). Researchers both insideand outside China have examined manyaspects of Chinese migration, including thevolumes of migration and descriptive accountsof social and economic characteristics ofmigrants and geographical patterns (e.g. Gold-stein and Goldstein, 1987a, 1990, 1991, 1993;Chan, 1988; Li and Hu, 1991; Shen and Tong,1992; Day and Ma, 1994; Ding, 1994; Xu andGu, 1994; Yang, 1994; Sha, 1995; Shen, 1995;Chang, 1996; Davin, 1999), and the determi-nants of migration based on census or surveydata (e.g. Qian, 1996; Liang and White, 1997;Ma and Liaw, 1997; Rozelle et al, 1997; Fan andHuang, 1998; Hare, 1998). A number of studieshave begun to look at migration with referenceto social institutions such as the hukou system(e.g. Mallee, 1988; Christiansen, 1990; Yangand Goldstein, 1990; Tan, 1993; Yang, X. 1993;Yang, Y. 1996; Chan, 1996b; Wang and Zuo,1997; Wang, 1997; Li and Siu, 1997; Solinger,1999), as well as the impact of migration on theeconomy and society and related policy issues(e.g. Solinger, 1995b, 1999; Nolan, 1993; Wan,1995; Chan, 1998). There is also a huge quantityof studies related to Chinese rural±urbanmigration and policies, subsumed under therubric of ùrbanisation' studies (see e.g. Chan,1994). These studies have shed light on manyaspects of Chinese migration, as well asproviding useful pointers for further research.

Based on the existing literature and adoptinga dualistic framework espoused by Chan(1996a) and Wang (1997), this paper aims toanalyse a `structural' aspect of Chinese migra-tion through the use of interprovincial migra-tion data from a sample drawn from China's1990 Census. The premise used is that the hukousystem, being a major Chinese socioeconomicinstitution, is important in structuring migra-tion in China. This approach departs from anumber of previous studies, which treat allChinese domestic migrants as one single un-differentiated mass (partly due to lack ofdisaggregated data) (see Liang and White,1997; Yan, 1998). Our approach takes into

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 425±448 (1999)

426 K. W. Chan et al.

consideration a macro-force in current Chinesesociety, the hukou system, and the `market'components that govern the behaviours of mostordinary people, including many migrants.To help assess the relevance of existing

frameworks to the Chinese case, a brief reviewof the special characteristics of migration inChina is in order. The most signi®cant aspectof migration that has struck many Westernscholars is the `non-voluntary' nature of theprocess, as noted by Poston and Yaukey (1992:615). We argue that any meaningful analysis ofChinese migration must start by makingreference to the hukou system, which affectsmigration in many ways. In China migration isheavily regulated and controlled by the state.Those wanting to change residence are re-quired to seek approval from governmentdepartments. A change in residence is deemedof®cial and approved only when it is accom-

panied by a conversion of one's hukou status tothe destination place. This last step is con-trolled by the Public Security Bureau. Theconversion confers de jure, legal residencyrights and, most importantly, eligibility formany urban jobs and accompanying subsi-dised welfare bene®ts (Cheng and Selden,1994; Mallee, 1995). Such a change is grantedonly when there are good reasons, especiallywhen the move serves, or at least is not at oddswith, state interests and policies (such ascontrolling the growth of large cities). Inessence, the hukou system in the pre-reformera functioned as a de facto internal passportmechanism.While approvals for migration because of

marriage or for seeking support from a familymember within a rural area or within the samelevel of urban centre are often granted, rural tourban migration was strictly regulated and

Table 1. Hukou and non-hukou rural±urban migrants.

Characteristics Hukou migrants Non-hukou migrants

Household registration type andstatus

Non-agricultural and local Agricultural and non-local

Entitlements to state-suppliedsocial bene®ts andopportunities

Full From nil to temporaryentitlements

Legal urban residency status Full status Illegal or temporarySocioeconomic sector Mostly in the state sector Mostly in the non-state sector;

also as temporary workers instate sector

Mechanism of effecting migration Determined by bureaucraticdecisions within plan limits

`Spontaneous', based on personalcontacts and marketinformation

Stability of moves Permanent Seasonal or semi-permanent

Labour characteristics of principalmigrantsSkill level Skilled and low-skilled workers Mostly unskilled or low-skilled

labour

Employment type Mostly permanent jobs Temporary or semi-permanentjobs in non-state enterprises;or self-employment

Housing Same as other urban residents Low-cost shelters or homeless

Source: Chan (1996a).


Migrations in China 427

suppressed in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of thistype of migration was reserved for bringing inthe necessary labour force in support of state-initiated programmes. Migration to the citywas only an ordinary peasant's dream. Today,peasants canmove to many places and work as`temporary' labour, but getting formally regis-tered as full urban residents in amedium-sizedor large city is still largely out of reach.

Since migration is selective, and as hukouand non-hukou migrants face starkly differentopportunities and constraints, a clear dualityof socioeconomic structure exists. Drawing onChan (1996b), Table 1 summarises this socialand economic dichotomy. The hukou statusremains an important watershed in the socialand economic contours of the migrants. With-out local hukou, peasant migrants to cities areexcluded from many job openings, especiallythose in the state sector. Except for a smallminority of self-employed entrepreneurs, non-hukou transients are largely con®ned to tem-porary or `3-D' (dirty, dif®cult and dangerous)jobs that are shunned by urbanites. Therequirement to have a permit (based on localhukou status) to work in many urban jobsgreatly limits the opportunities of the non-hukoumigrants. They are most likely to end upin the bottom rungs of the occupationalhierarchy, and, typically, physically segre-gated from and socially marginalised by main-stream society. Because of the paramountimportance of the hukou, population ¯ows inChina are most meaningfully classi®ed alonghukou lines: (a) migration with residency rights(hereafter, hukou migration); and (b) migrationwithout hukou at destination (non-hukou mi-gration).2

While no single existing migration model®ts the special Chinese situation well, there isapparent similarity to Chinese migration insome aspects of internal and internationalmigration elsewhere, which have been exam-ined through neoclassical economics andhistorical±structural models (e.g. Chapmanand Prothero, 1985; Papademetriou and Mar-tin, 1991; Massey et al., 1993, 1994; Lucas, 1997).From another angle, Chinese migration alsobears the characteristics of some other socialistcountries (e.g. Brown and Neuberger, 1977;Ofer, 1977; Demko and Fuchs, 1977; Helgeson,1978; Forbes and Thrift, 1987; Demko and

Regulska, 1987; Ronnas and Sjoberg, 1993). Atthe macro-level, the nature of the dualisticsocial structure set up and maintained by theChinese `socialist' state is strikingly similar tothat in capitalist societies posited by historical±structuralist theories (Portes andWalton, 1981;Castells and Portes, 1989). This is central tounderstanding how labour migration is struc-tured and controlled, and to the resultantsocioeconomic segmentation. The broad out-comes and character of segmentation in Chinaare akin to what has been stated in segmentedlabour market theory: a bifurcated labourmarket made up of a primary segment thatproduces relatively stable, skills-oriented jobswith higher pay and bene®ts, and a secondarysegment of unskilled, temporary and low-payjobs, with signi®cant mobility barriers betweenthe segments (e.g. Piore, 1979; Taubman andWachter, 1986). With the hukou system actingas a form of internal passport control, China'shuge geographical extent and intra-Han cul-tural and linguistic diversities also create someresemblance to international migration, whichintensi®es social segmentation (Honig, 1990).As in most developing economies, migration

in China in peaceful times is primarily employ-ment or labour-driven, whether initiated bythe government or by individuals. As thehukou system de®nes different opportunitiesand constraints for people of different hukoustatuses and causes signi®cant socioeconomicsegmentation, one can conceive of a system oftwo different large `circuits' within whichmigration operates. While most migrationresponds to universal factors such as distanceand employment to varying degrees, migrantswithin each circuit function quite differently,depending on the condition of the origin area(such as high population pressure), its avail-able resources (mainly job information andopportunities) and constraints they have toface (such as transportation costs and admin-istrative barriers). Typically, Chinese peasantmigrants (the main part of non-hukou migra-tion) depend heavily on informal migrationnetworks (see Solinger, 1995c), moving fromregions of high population pressure to placeswhere large numbers of low-skilled jobs areavailable. The movements have mostly beenself-initiated (ziliu) responses by peasants tomarket forces of demand and supply within



the con®nes permissible by the current poli-tical and social structures. Hukou migration,however, generally does not respond directlyto job opportunities in the low-skill sector.Rather, mobility occurs mostly through vari-ous government channels, such as the jobassignment system for college graduates anddemobilised military personnel, the job trans-fer system for state workers (even because ofpersonal reasons), and return migration as thegovernment repudiates various policies suchas rustication. These moves generally requireof®cial approval in accordance with govern-ment policies and labour plans through a set ofcomplicated bureaucratic procedures.Our formulation treats migration as a form

of investment for the migrant to maximisebene®ts in a broad sense (including non-pecuniary bene®ts such as amenities) (Lewis,1954; Sjaastad, 1962; Harris and Todaro, 1970;Todaro, 1976). The relevance of this behaviour-al assumption rests on the fact that most, if notall, migration in the post-Mao era is arguably`voluntary' migration. It is true that hukoulabour migration is mostly initiated by thestate in accordance with national and regionaleconomic and labour force plans, and, in theextreme case, people are treated merely as oneof the inputs of production and are subject tothe disposal of the planner (Ma, 1995). Inpractice, in the last two decades there has beena high degree of concurrence between indivi-duals' wishes and state assignments in mostcases. Some of the moves were initiated by thestate, but many by individuals, although stillregulated by Government's labour plans ofvarious kinds. Migration, most obviously non-hukou migration, then operates similarly to`free' migration in market economies, subjectto administrative and economic constraints,which are numerous and quite powerful attimes in China. Hare's (1998, 1999) work hasprovided some good illustrations of this typeof migration in China. The similar fortunes ofmost non-hukou migrants in China and ThirdWorld immigrants to developed countries(both legal and illegal) further suggest someconsistency in the mechanisms and processesof migration (Roberts, 1997). In a general sense,different types of migration react differentlyand to different situations in the origins anddestinations, and are conditioned by a number

of other factors, as Gurak and Caces (1992)have outlined in a different context.

EMPIRICAL STUDY

The data-set employed is the interprovincialmigration (IPM) subsample of the 1% systema-tic migrant sample of the 1990 Census, whichcontains 353,517 individual records with 16variables, including basic demographic vari-ables, hukou type and status, three migrationvariables (origin, type of origin place, andreason for migration), educational and occu-pational variables (see State Council and SSB,1993). Our main analysis is to link migrationwith contextual factors, i.e. conditions at bothorigin and destination. This is only feasible atthe interprovincial level, as the 1990 Censusrecorded only the provinces from whichmigrants originated. IPM accounts for 32.5%of all the migration in 1985±90 as de®ned bythe 1990 Census.Our IPM subsample contains a total of

116,924 records of migrants, accounting for33.1% of the migrant sample (see Table 2). Inthe following, we will approach the two typesof migration from three complementaryangles. We ®rst compare the socioeconomiccharacteristics of the two major types ofmigrants, hukou and non-hukou. Becauselabour migration is the core of non-hukoumigration, and because of their volume (morethan half of all non-hukou migrants) andbehaviours, we have also concentrated on`non-hukou labour migration'. For clarity, thesemigrants will hereafter be referred to as `rurallabour migrants' and be treated separately.Labour migration has also been a majorstrategy used by rural households to improvetheir living standards. The descriptive com-parison is followed by a more focused study ofthe interprovincial migration ¯ows of the twotypes (and relevant subtypes) using maps.Finally, we set up place-to-place migrationmodels to analyse the relationship betweenmigration rates and a set of independentvariables relating destinations and origins.

Descriptive Analysis

Socioeconomic characteristics of migrantsIn the 1990 Census, migrants were de®ned as



Table 2. Social and demographic characteristics of interprovincial migrants, 1985±1990 (%).

All migration Interprovincial migration

Migrant characteristic Total Hukou Non-hukou Hukou Non-hukou Rural labour

SexMale 56.1 55.3 57.3 56.3 61.3 77.2Female 43.9 44.7 42.7 43.7 38.7 22.8

Age (years)5±14 8.2 7.7 8.5 9.1 7.215±19 13.4 13.7 13.0 10.9 13.1 15.920±29 51.8 54.8 48.0 52.3 50.9 57.230±39 13.0 11.4 14.9 13.3 14.8 16.640±49 6.6 6.6 6.6 8.0 6.3 6.550±59 3.8 36.0 4.0 4.0 3.5 2.7> 60 3.3 2.2 4.7 2.6 4.1 1.1

Marital statusUnmarried 40.9 44.0 37.4 38.5 38.6 52.9Married 48.2 46.3 50.5 50.4 50.8 46.0

Regular residenceCity 19.5 28.2 9.2 43.0 11.6 4.5Town 18.9 23.7 13.2 17.4 10.5 8.7Rural township 61.6 48.2 77.6 39.5 77.9 86.8

Reasons for moveJob transfer 11.9 18.0 4.6 24.1 5.2Job assignment 6.9 10.4 2.7 11.7 0.8Employment in industry and business 23.7 1.8 50.3 1.7 54.7 100.0Studying or training 12.8 21.4 2.8 14.8 2.2Living with relatives and friends 9.7 6.6 13.2 8.7 12.7Retirement or resignation 1.6 2.1 1.0 2.5 0.8Migration with families 11.0 13.7 7.9 15.6 7.4Marriage 13.8 15.6 11.3 14.8 11.4Other 8.7 10.4 6.3 6.2 4.8

EducationNo schooling 9.0 6.1 12.3 6.2 12.0 6.1Elementary school 25.3 20.5 30.8 20.7 31.7 29.4Junior high school 34.0 26.3 43.2 26.5 43.8 54.7Senior high school 11.7 13.6 9.6 14.4 8.8 8.8College 20.1 33.5 2.1 32.3 3.7 0.9

Not in the workforce 36.8 45.2 26.6 38.6 22.6 0.6

Occupational status of those in workforceProfessional 11.7 21.0 3.3 23.6 2.7 1.4Administrative 2.2 3.6 1.2 4.1 0.9 0.8Clerical 4.6 7.8 1.5 11.1 1.2 0.8Sales 7.3 4.2 10.4 4.2 9.0 11.5Service 7.0 4.6 9.7 4.4 7.8 8.6Industrial workers 41.9 26.8 55.9 24.4 59.3 70.5Farmers 25.3 31.9 18.4 28.3 18.9 6.6

n 353,517 190,599 159,320 54,104 62,820 34,233

Source: 1990 Census 1% Sample.



those aged ®ve years and above who had adifferent place of regular residence on 1 July1985. For those who did not have a local hukouin the destination (non-hukou migrants), theywould have to be in the destination for at leastone year, or to be away from their place ofregistration for at least one year (State Counciland SSB, 1993). This operational de®nition ofmigrant therefore excludes short-distance,intra-county/city migrants and non-hukoumigrants who moved between mid-1989 andmid-1990. By this, it would also exclude allthe short-term `¯oating population', a goodportion of whom are not truly migrants (suchas visitors, tourists, and people on businesstrips) (see Chan, 1994; Solinger, 1995a).Table 2 summarises the socioeconomic

characteristics of three types of interprovincialmigrants, hukou, non-hukou and rural labourmigrants. Information about the characteristicsof all hukou and non-hukoumigrants (includingwithin-province migrants) is also supplied toprovide the context. Overall, as the statisticsshow, there are broad similarities in manyaspects of the interprovincial (IP) migrants toall migrants. Because of this, it is likely thatmany of the processes of IPM examined in thispaper would also exist for migration withinprovinces. For the purposes of this paper,however, we are more interested in comparinghukou and non-hukou migrants. Generally,hukou and non-hukou migrants were domi-nated by males and those aged 20±29. This isthe age cohort most likely to generate life-cycleevents related to residential changes, just likemigrants in many other countries (Skeldon,1990). Non-hukou migrants had a higher sexratio and this was even higher in the IPmigrants. This became very pronounced inrural labour migration (last column) wheremales outnumbered females by a ratio of 3 to 1.The broad similarities between the two types

end when one moves to the socioeconomicvariables. While non-hukou migrants (andrural labour migrants) are heavily concen-trated in the educational levels of juniormiddle and primary school, hukou migrantsare disproportionately represented in thehighly educated categories (senior middleschool level and up). In fact, in the hukoumigrant population, the college-educated hadthe largest share (about a third) among the four

educational attainment levels (this compareswith less than 2% of the nation's populationaged six and over having had college-leveleducation in 1990). This clearly attests to thehigh skill selectivity of hukou migration.Non-hukou migrants had a higher percen-

tage (about three-quarters) in the workforcethan the hukou migrants. IP migrants had alsohigher employment rates, and therefore madepredominantly work-related moves. Amongthose in the workforce, it is clear that hukoumigrants (predominantly moving to urbandestinations, except for marriage migration)are highly skewed in the professional andtechnical categories (about 21±24%). Theircomposition broadly resembles that of theurban population as a whole (Chan, 1999). Incontrast, 95% of the non-hukou migrants hademployment at the clerical level or lower.Common jobs were manufacturing frontlineworkers, construction workers, nannies, andsales and service workers (Yang, 1994). Therewere also many self-employed craft-typeworkers (artisans) and small vendors. In fact,self-employment has become a more favouredsector for rural migrants for good reasons (seelocal studies such as Li and Siu, 1997; Wangand Zuo, 1997). The large numbers of farmworkers in hukou migration largely re¯ectrural±rural marriage migration of women(see Fan and Huang, 1998).One more striking difference between hukou

and non-hukou migrants is in the type ofregular residence at the origin. In the IPmigrant sample, about 60% of hukou migrantscame from urban areas, mostly from cities; infact, most IP hukou migration occurred withinthe urban sector itself. On the other hand, 78%of non-hukou migration was from the country-side (rural townships), and an even higherpercentage (87%) was found for rural labourmigration. Essentially, non-hukou migrationoriginates from the countryside and it includesa large amount of rural-to-urban migration.Labour migration3 accounts for about 50±

60% of both types of IP migration, similar toother developing countries. The channels ofmigration, however, are different between thetwo and from those in other countries. `Jobtransfer', `job assignment upon graduation',and `study and training' in China refer toemployment allotment or employment-or-



Figure 1(a,b). The 30 largest interprovincial ¯ows in 1985±90. (a) All migrants. (b) Hukou migrants.Source: 1990 Census data and 1% sample.



iented training controlled almost exclusivelyby the government. These were the channelsthrough which practically all hukou labourmigrants got or changed their jobs and moved.By contrast, of those non-hukoumigrants citinga job as the reason for migration, close to 90%found jobs and moved using market channels(the èmployment in industry and business'category refers to self-sought jobs outside theplan sector), typically through the help ofrelatives and friends, job ads, or recruitmentagents. Only a tiny proportion (about 12% ofthose job-related migrants) cited governmentjob channels as reasons for migration.

Interprovincial migratory ¯owsThe second part of the analysis is to examinethe major ¯ows of the various types of IPmigration and to place our study in the contextof China's geography. Because of the graphicand space limitations, we can only show about30±40 ¯ow streams, instead of all ¯ows(ranging from 512 to 755 depending on the

type), on each map. The ¯ow maps thereforedisplay just the largest ¯ows of migrationstreams in each type, with varying proportionsof the number of migrants in each type(examined later).Figure 1a depicts the 30 largest non-differ-

entiated migration streams crossing provincialboundaries.4 These 30 streams represent about40% of the total IP migrants. Generally,interprovincial ¯ows were primarily towardsthe coast. Most of the coastal provinces (suchas Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu)gained population from provinces like Sichuanand Guangxi in Central and Western China.5

Many believe that this re¯ects the differencesin the level of economic development. Whilethis may be true, this amalgam also maskssigni®cant differences between hukou migra-tion and non-hukou migration and relatedcomplexities. Figures 1b and 1c reveal thedifferent patterns of the two types of migra-tion. Non-hukou ¯ows (Fig. 1c), mostly for jobs,are predominantly from the interior to the

Figure 1(c). The 30 largest interprovincial ¯ows in 1985±90 (Non-Hukou migrants). Source: 1990 Census dataand 1% sample.



Figure 2. The largest interprovincial ¯ows, 1985±90. (a) Non-hukou Èmployment in industry and business'group. (b) Hukou `job transfers' group. Source: 1990 Census 1% sample.



coast, converging at major economic hubs likethe Pearl River Delta (Guangdong) and me-tropolises such as Shanghai and Beijing. Therewere also a considerable number of migrantsfrom the densely populated Sichuan andHenan areas to frontier provinces like Xinjiangand Nei Mongol, mostly taking up jobs orbusiness opportunities there in commerce,construction and farming. Overall, the non-hukou migrants moved to where job opportu-nities were available. This is evidence ofmarket forces at work. It appears that theseforces were so powerful that in some cases, asigni®cant number of migrants were willing tocross hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometresto very distant, and often culturally andenvironmentally different provinces (such asfrom Sichuan to Guangdong and Heilong-jiang), although many (the largest twostreams) moved to neighbouring provinces.These migrants expected to bene®t from largewage differentials (often in the range of 3±4times more) between an urban unskilled job ina coastal city and a farm job in an inlandprovince (see Liu, 1995).

However, for many hukou migrants, suchlarge economic gains did not exist. Except forreturn migratory streams like those comingfrom Xinjiang and Heilongjiang, most out-of-province hukou migratory streams were gen-erally quite `conservative', over shorter dis-tances than the non-hukou migrations (Fig. 1b).They appear to have preferred nearby pro-vinces whose culture, languages and environ-ment were likely to be similar and presumablyeasier to adapt to (see also Ding, 1994).Another characteristic of hukou migratorystreams at the upper end is the prevalence oftwo-way ¯ows for some provinces. There weresigni®cant exchanges between many pairs ofadjacent provinces, both of similar (e.g. Si-chuan and Yunnan) and different (e.g. Jiangsuand Anhui) economic levels. The situation isdifferent for non-hukou migration. Provincesactive in migration were either major netimporters (such as Guangdong and Shanghai)or major net exporters (such as Sichuan). Thelargest ¯ows were from those provinces withvery large populations.Looking at the above three maps together

Figure 3. Distribution of migration streams. Source: 1990 Census 1% sample.



and supplemented by information in theorigin±destination (OD) matrices, we can seethat the three provincial-level cities, Beijing,Shanghai and Tianjin, and Guangdong, aremajor destinations for both hukou and non-hukou migrants. For non-hukou migration,many large ¯ows were from provinces withlarger populations (also much higher popula-tion densities), such as Sichuan, Henan, Shan-dong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu. It is likely that thepush factor of population pressure was asigni®cant one for non-hukou migration. Forhukou migration, the basic pattern is that, inaddition to moving to the popular areasdescribed above, migrants moved away fromthe frontier provinces, such as Heilongjiangand Xinjiang, to coastal provinces such asJiangsu and Shandong. The latter groupcomprised return migrants who moved tofrontier regions in the 1950s to 1970s.6 Theabove patterns can be further illustrated bylooking at the employment-generated hukouand non-hukou migrations only, in Figs 2a and2b. Figure 2a shows only the `rural labour'migration ¯ows (èmployment in business andindustry' group) of Fig. 1c. It is clear that a fewdestinations and origins dominate the wholescene. Indeed, the largest 30 ¯ows (about 4% ofthe total number of ¯ows) accounted for about58% of all the rural labour migrants, comparedwith 45% for all non-hukou migration and only29% for hukou migration (see Fig. 3). Threenational labour markets (i.e. Beijing-Tianjin,Shanghai-Jiangsu and Guangdong) stand out,with most migrants supplied by a few popu-lous provinces: Sichuan, Zhejiang, Shandong,Jiangsu andHebei. The largest migratory ¯owsof the hukou `job transfers' group in Fig. 2billustrate a different pattern: there were a fewsigni®cant long-distance return ¯ows from thefrontiers to the coast, and many, perhapsregular, IP migration ¯ows operating largelyover short distances between nearby provin-ces.

Statistical Analysis

The above ¯ow maps provide a backgroundanalysis of the geographical patterns of themajor types of migrants. To go beyond thedescriptive accounts and gain some under-standing of the general factors that determine

IP migration of various types, we have set up astatistical model that links migration with thegeographical and economic conditions in bothorigins and destinations. This is different fromprevious studies that focused only on eitherthe destination or the origin. Such an approachalso allows us to make generalisations aboutthe two types of migrants and the migrationcircuits within which they function. A numberof migration models (in-migration or out-migration) used in recent work implicitlyassume that potential migrants have equalaccess to destinations in terms of informationand transportation, and that destination attri-butes do not vary across origins (Liang andWhite, 1997). Thus, estimates from thosemodels may overestimate the responsivenessof migrants to destination factors in a spacelesscontext, and neglect the relative impacts ofeither origin or destination factors (see alsoMueller, 1982). Place-to-place migration mod-els can overcome those de®ciencies and put theanalysis in a solid geographical context. Themodels link the gross migration rate betweenorigins and destinations to an array of factors,such as demographic, socioeconomic variablesat origins and destinations, and distance. Thistype of model has been widely applied inmarket economies, in both developed anddeveloping countries, where migrants can`freely' respond to existing opportunities andconstraints (Rogers, 1967; Greenwood, 1969;Wadycki, 1974; Fields, 1982; Schultz, 1982).Our design is to assess the impact of a numberof variables on the migration rates through aset of ordinary least square (OLS) regressionmodels. Using the same variables, we willconduct regression analyses for different typesof migration, and by comparing the regressioncoef®cients, we can determine the degree ofsensitivity of each factor on each type ofmigration.A place-to-place migration model com-

monly takes the double logarithmic form asfollows:

ln mij = a + bl lnPi + b2 lnPj + Sgm lnXmi

+ Sln lnXnj + d lnDij + eij (1)

where mij is the gross migration rate fromregion i to region j, Pi and Pj are thepopulations in region i and region j, Xmi and



Xnj are the socioeconomic variables in region iand region j, Dij is the distance between i and j,and eij is the error term. It is easy to see thesimilarity of the model to the `gravity' model.7

The double logarithmic form is preferred fortwo reasons: (a) it has behaviour implicationsand is comparable to the logistic model;8 (b) adouble log function allows an assessment ofthe sensitivity of independent variables ondependent variables (as it measures thepercentage change). In addition to `gravity'variables (i.e. populations at origins anddestinations and the distance between them),other variables such as income, unemploy-ment or employment, past migration, andamenities are often included in the model(see Mueller, 1982, for details). Two widelyused variables are wage rate and unemploy-ment rate, mostly because of the famousHarris±Todaro expected wage hypothesis.Migrants respond not just to simple wage rate

or employment rates, but the expected wagerate, which is the product of the current wagerate and the probability of ®nding a job.One advantage of the place-to-place migra-

tion model is that it can examine the relativeimportance of push factors at origins and pullfactors at destinations. Past studies have foundthat impacts of economic conditions at originsand destinations are not symmetrical, andgenerally the pull factors at destinations havestronger impacts (Lowry, 1966; Fields, 1982).This is contrary to expectations that originfactors should be more important, ceterisparibus, because migrants have more informa-tion about origin conditions. The oft-citedexplanations for this asymmetry are migration®nance and selectivity of migrants (Green-wood, 1975; Mueller, 1982). An increase ofincome at the origin may decrease the incen-tive to migrate, but it can also increase thepossibility of migration as an effective alter-

Table 3. De®nitions of variables in the migration models.

Variables Notations De®nitions

Gross migration rate Mij The number of migrants in each type moving from province i toprovince j in 1985±90 over the population in province i in 1985.*

Distance Dij The railway distance in kilometres between the provincialcapitals of province i and province j

Population Pi, Pj The size of population at i and j, respectively, in 1985

Consumption per capita Ci, Cj The consumption level per capita in provinces i and j respectively,in 1985

Agricultural share Ai, Aj The percentage of agricultural labour in the total labour force fori and j in 1985

Migration stock MSj The number of migrants in each type in 1982±86 over the totalpopulation of province j in 1985.

Foreign direct investment FDIj The absolute amount of direct foreign investment in provincej in 1985

Land±labour ratio LLi, LLj The ratio of arable land and the size of the agricultural labourforce at i and j in 1985

Notes:

* Since the total gross out-migration rates for most provinces are very small, mostly under 1% of total population, themigration odds ratio (Pij/Pii) should not be very different from the gross out-migration rate (Pij/(Pij� Pii). The populationfor non-hukou labour migration ideally should be those aged 15 years or older in 1990. Since non-hukou labour migration(`rural labour migration') accounts for a very small percentage of the total population, for convenience we have used thetotal population in 1985 instead of that aged 15 years or older.



native, especially for those who would like tomigrate but could not afford to migratepreviously. So the two impacts of incomeincrease on migration may offset each other,leaving the origin income insigni®cant. An-other argument is that migrants more likelyaffected by origin conditions have alreadymoved out, so high unemployment rates indepressed areas are not associated with highout-migration rates.

An empirical model for Chinese migrationTo suit the Chinese situations, a formal modelto test the determinants of regional migrationis revised. In addition to the classical variablessuch as distance and population, we have alsoincluded variables relevant or speci®c toChina:

Mij � f�Dij;Pi;Pj;Ai;Aj;Ci;Cj;

MSj; FDIj;LLi; LLj��2�

De®nitions of the variables are given in Table3. Below are some additional explanations. Weuse railway distance to represent distance, Dij,since it is the dominant means of long-distancepassenger transportation in China (unlike thelinear distance used inWang, 1993; Li, S. 1994).Although direct transportation costs formigrants may be quite small compared withthe earnings, they are still consistently foundto be the most important factors in grossmigration in both developed and developingcountries (Greenwood, 1975; Schultz, 1982;Yan, 1998). Increase in distance not only raisesthe transportation costs but also increases theuncertainty and risks of migration, becauseinformation about more distant places isgenerally less readily available. Also, thefurther away from family and friends, themore one endures psychic costs because of thegreater dif®culty in contacting home and thegreater adaptation required to the new envir-onment (Greenwood, 1975).

In China, usable unemployment rates (ruralor urban) are not available for our purpose(Banister and Taylor, 1990; Jefferson andRawski, 1992). We choose instead the percen-tage of agricultural labour in the total labourforce (Ai and Aj) as a proxy for populationpressure and the economic structure of theprovince. The variable re¯ects mostly the

situation of unemployment and underemploy-ment in rural areas. Generally, higher percen-tages of the labour force in agriculturecorrelates with higher percentages of surpluslabour. The indicator is also used as thevariable to measure the degree of industriali-sation (Kuznets, 1982; Nielsen, 1994). Weexpect high and positive coef®cients of Ai fornon-hukou migration and rural labour migra-tion, but a lower coef®cient for hukou migra-tion, and a negative coef®cient of Aj for bothhukou and non-hukou migration.Neither are Chinese wage data re¯ective of

the total incomes, since non-wage incomes aresigni®cant in China (Solinger, 1995b; Jeffersonand Rawski, 1992). Other indices, such asindustrial output per capita or GDP per capita,have no behavioural meaning, although theyare related to economic development. Aftersome experimentation, we have chosen percapita consumption at the provincial level as aproxy for wage or living standard. For bothnon-hukou and hukou migrants, generally weexpect migration rate to correlate negativelywith consumption at the origin, and positivelywith that at the destination. But as previouslystated, higher incomes (as measured by con-sumption) may also increase the ability to®nance migration, and thus might be posi-tively associated with migration, especially inthe early stages. For hukou migration, as therewas increasing concurrence between govern-ment plans and individual choice due togreater autonomy of enterprise in labourassignment and to greater government invest-ment in the coastal areas, one would alsoexpect hukou migration to be attracted tohigher-income locations from lower-incomeprovinces.Populations at origins and destinations (Pi

and Pj) are typical gravity variables in migra-tion models. Generally, population size is usedas a kind of proxy variable to economicopportunities caused by agglomeration econo-mies, so people will move from less populatedto more populated places. For example, alarger population would have a greater de-mand for basic services, which are typicallyprovided by informal sectors in developingcountries. Greenwood (1971) proposed thatmigration would be positively associated withdestination population size, and negatively



with origin population size. Schultz (1982)argued that the population variable couldre¯ect the impacts of other socioeconomicfactors that in¯uence migration and whichare not speci®ed in the models, and thus notgiving purely the effect of population size.9

Population size at the destination should havepositive effect for both non-hukou and hukoumigration. Large population size at the originis also positively correlated with rural popula-tion surplus; therefore, it would be a pushfactor for non-hukou migration (positivelycorrelated) but we do not expect hukou migra-tion to be associated with that variable.Migration networks, represented by migra-

tion stock (MS), which has been found to be asigni®cant variable in migration models based

on other countries (Greenwood, 1969; Navril,1977; Hatton and Williamson, 1994), are alsovery important to migration in China (Rozelleet al., 1997; Yan, 1998). Since migration is oftenfacilitated by friends and relatives at thedestination by reducing risks and providinginformation and accommodation, it re¯ects theeffects of social networks. So typically themigration stock variable should be positive.There are probably different ways and degreesof `networking' with previous migrants forhukou and non-hukou migrants. Since non-hukou migrants in China rely heavily oninformal networks, we expect the migrationstock to be a much more important variablethan for hukou migrants.

Another variable that is important in deter-

Table 4. Place-to-place migration double logarithmic regression models: weighted by % of migrants of eachstream.

Migration types

Hukou Non-hukou Rural labour All

Distance from i to j (Dij) ÿ0.802** ÿ0.712** ÿ0.905** ÿ0.749**ÿ18.3 ÿ11.9 ÿ13.5 ÿ15.7

Origin population (Pi) ÿ0.607** ÿ0.177 ÿ0.406** ÿ0.308**ÿ11.1 ÿ1.8 ÿ3.4 ÿ4.5

Agricultural share at i (Ai) 0.500** 0.925** 2.014** 0.731**4.7 4.1 7.1 5.11

Migration stock (Mj) ÿ0.071 0.193** 0.235** 0.075ÿ1.9 3.1 6.2 1.5

Foreign direct investment (FDIj) 0.195** 0.366** 0.330** 0.325**7.5 12.6 11.3 12.6

Land/labour ratio at i (LLi) 0.759** ÿ0.100 ÿ1.437** 0.392**12.3 ÿ0.8 ÿ8.7 5.1

Land/labour ratio at j (LLj) ÿ0.367** 0.585** 0.445** 0.36**ÿ3.2 5.1 3.2 3.5

Intercept 11.122** 6.057** 12.235** 7.777**16.4 5.6 9.2 10

R2 0.49 0.38 0.53 0.43F 100** 57** 83** 77**Number of cases 755 660 512 732

Note:

** Signi®cant at 0.01 level.t-values are in italics.



mining migration in present China is foreigndirect investment (FDI). Foreign investment hasbeen studied in terms of its impact on interna-tional migration, but much less for internalmigration (Ricketts, 1987; Sassen, 1988). Recentstudies and migrant surveys in China havefound that migrants, especially rural labourmigrants, are attracted to areas where foreign-invested ®rms are concentrated, such as theZhujiang Delta (e.g. Fan, 1996). The 1980s was aperiod of rapid employment growth in theforeign-invested enterprise sector, in contrast tothe relatively sluggish expansion of the state-owned sector. Most foreign ventures in Chinaare in labour-intensive sectors, employing largenumbers of both skilled and especially un-skilled workers.

In order to capture the uneven distributionof land resources and labour force, we havealso included land±labour ratios at the originand destination, respectively (LLi and LLj). Theland±labour ratio measures how much arableland is available per agricultural worker, andso it is a direct measure of the availability ofland resources and surplus rural labour.Frontier provinces, such as Heilongjiang andXinjing, have favourable land-labour ratios.We expect the land±labour ratio at the origin tocorrelate negatively with non-hukoumigration,since this type of migrant is more likely tocome from provinces with low land±labourratios. Non-hukou migrants moved to areaswith high land±labour ratios for employmentin the agricultural sector. In contrast, hukoumigrants are unlikely to go to areas with highland±labour ratios in the reform period.

As far as the distribution of migrationstreams is concerned, an examination ofmigration OD matrices or even the ¯ow mapsshowing only the largest ¯ows (Figs 1 and 2)reveals it to be highly uneven. A great majorityof migrants were concentrated in just a few ofthe largest streams. The degree of concentra-tion also varies from one type to another, asillustrated by Fig. 3. Given the huge differencesin size between the largest migration streamsand the smallest (a multiple of several hun-dred times), we cannot treat every migrationstream as equal. Instead, we have chosen theweighted regression model to estimate thecoef®cients. The weight for a migration streamis the percentage of migrants in that stream of

the total number of interprovincial migrants ofthat type. Theoretically, the maximum numberof migratory streams (or cells in an ODmatrix)is 756 (= 28� 27) for a 28-unit case.10 Of course,some of the OD cells are empty because therewere no or negligible ¯ows moving betweenthose origins and destinations in the sample.As a result, the number of cases in theregression analysis range from 512 to 755 fordifferent types (see Table 4, last row).

Regression results and interpretationsIn order to test the differential effects of theabove variables on different types of migra-tion, we ran a multiple regression modelseparately for each type of migration (hukou,non-hukou, and rural labour migration). Wealso ran a model for all types combined (àll'migration). A table listing zero-order correla-tions for each independent variable with thedependent variable is in Appendix 2 forreference. The simple correlations show thatamong all the variables, FDI, and to a lesserextent, Dij, Aj, Mij, Li and Lj, are weaklycorrelated with migration rates in most mod-els, and with most signs in the anticipateddirections. In the multiple regression analysis,in order to eliminate the multicollinearityproblem, we have examined the correlationsamong the independent variables and decidedto drop the variables Aj, Pj, Ci and Cj because ofthe strong correlations among them and withother variables. The results of the ®nal modelsare reported in Table 4. The R2 values arereasonably high and the F-statistics are sig-ni®cant at the 0.01 level. Almost all thecoef®cients are also signi®cant. Attention toeach of the coef®cients among different typesof migrations allows us to gauge the differ-ential effect of each variable (factor) ondifferent types of migration, and to infer theunderlying mechanisms at work in variousmigration circuits.Firstly, there are four variables that produce

uniformly positive or negative, and mostlysigni®cant, effects on the three migrationtypes. The variables that respond positivelyare Ai and FDI, and negatively,D and Pi. Theseare all expected. Ai and FDI re¯ect very muchthe migration push (rural surplus labour) andpull (job opportunities) forces at work, asdiscussed before. The higher coef®cients of



FDI for the non-hukou types are also consistentwith the fact that foreign-invested enterprisesare often labour-intensive and hire predomi-nantly non-hukou workers (see Zhao, 1995).The signi®cant positive effects of Ai on rurallabour migration (2.01) and non-hukou migra-tion (0.93), much higher than that on hukoumigration (0.50), also corresponds to our apriori theory of rural surplus labour and rurallabour migration.Another consistency across the three types

of migration is the dominant role of distance.In all the equations, D is highly signi®cant andhas the expected negative sign. Migrationdecreases with distance because ®nancial andpsychic costs and uncertainty increase withdistance. The coef®cients range from ÿ0.71 fornon-hukou migration to ÿ0.91 for rural labourmigration, with ÿ0.80 for hukou migration.Distance is more of a deterrent to migration forhukou migrants than for non-hukou migrants.This is consistent with what one sees looking atonly the 30 largest ¯ows, as shown in Figs 1band 1c.However, it appears that there is a dual

structure in non-hukou migration. For thosemoving for work (rural labour migrants), thedistance deterrent is the greatest. A number ofthe largest ¯ows of rural labour are withinshort distances such as from Hebei to Beijingand Tianjin, from Anhui to Jiangsu, or fromGuangxi to Guangdong. Among the largeststreams, only migration from Sichuan is theexception. Some of the probable reasons forthis may include greater uncertainties faced bythese labourmigrants because they relymainlyon themselves and/or informal networks toget (often temporary) jobs and accommoda-tion. Rural labour migrants, mostly unmarried,tended to migrate to nearby places for workand maintained close contact with their homebases for support. A large part of non-hukoumigration in the non-work categories is gener-ated by marriage. They move over longdistances, such as those from southwesternprovinces to the east coast (Fan and Huang,1998). This signi®cantly reduces the distancecoef®cient on non-hukou migration in theregression.More importantly, however, the hukou and

non-hukou migrations demonstrate oppositeresponses in the remaining variables, LLi, LLj

and MS. The opposite signs of the coef®cientsbetween the hukou and the non-hukou typessupport the hypothesis that the two types ofmigration operate in structures of very differ-ent natures. Hukoumigration was regulated bygovernment, while rural labour was more afunction of the `free' market, similar to rural±urban migrants in other developing countries.The positive coef®cient of LLj and negativecoef®cient of LLj for non-hukou migration, andespecially rural labour migration, are consis-tent with the population pressure postulate.With the coef®cient of Ai, they point to animportant role for surplus rural labour (partlydue to land scarcity) in generating rural labourmigration. The coef®cients of LLi and LLj forhukou migrants are just the opposite. Whilemost IP hukou migrants tend to move shorterdistances and are likely to move betweenprovinces with similar environments, becauseof return ¯ows of migrants frommore sparselypopulated frontier provinces such as Xinjiangto more densely populated and urbanisedprovinces, the coef®cients of LLi and LLj areopposite to those for the non-hukou migrationand rural labour migration. This contrast couldbe due to the signi®cance of return migrationin hukou migration, the motivation for whichwas more for family reunion than for work.Most of this type of return migration was fromthe less populated frontier provinces to thedensely inhabited eastern region.Looking at the coef®cients of FDI, LLi, LLj

and Ai together shows that non-hukou migra-tion moved away from provinces with a highpercentage of farm employment and high landpressure, to destinations with job opportu-nities. One group of destinations was thefrontier provinces where arable land was moreplentiful and commercially less developed.Those provinces provided many job opportu-nities for semi-skilled labour migrants intraditional craft-type work (like shoe repairsand tailoring), construction and petty com-merce, or unskilled farm jobs (Liu, 1991; Feng,1993). The other group, which is more im-portant, is those provinces with high rates offoreign investment and where factory jobs forunskilled labour migrants are available. Forhukou migrants, foreign direct investment isalso still a signi®cant variable, but the value ofthe coef®cient is only about half of that for non-



hukou migrants.Perhaps the clearest differentiation of the

two migration circuits lies in the migrationnetworks, which are crucial for generatingnon-hukou migration but not hukou migration.The MS coef®cient is signi®cant and stronglypositive for non-hukou migrants. The coef®-cient is much higher for rural labour migrationthan for non-hukou migration, consistent withthe point that non-hukou migration is more`networked' with other migrants in the samegroup (Rozelle et al., 1997; Yan, 1998). Non-hukou labour migrants relied more on the helpof friends and relatives in seeking jobs andadapting to the new environment of thedestination. As for hukou migration, the MSvariable has a very small negative sign and isnot statistically signi®cant. Unlike non-hukoumigrants, hukou migrants depend more onof®cial and formal channels and less uponinformal help from friends and relatives whomigrated earlier to the same destination.11

CONCLUSIONS

This paper has analysed migration in China byincorporating a major socioeconomic institu-tion, the hukou system, in the analytical frame-work. We have ®rst compared and contrastedthe socioeconomic characteristics and geogra-phical patterns of hukou and non-hukou migra-tory ¯ows crossing provincial boundaries, anddeveloped some hypotheses about the twomigration circuits with different operatingprocesses. It is found that these two types ofinterprovincial migrants shared some generaldemographic characteristics; they were domi-nated by young adults between the ages of 20and 29, predominantly male and married,although rural labour had a higher percentageunder the age of 20 and unmarried. Thesegeneral features are very similar to those ofmigrants elsewhere, re¯ecting the active mi-gratory stages in one's life cycle. There are alsosome substantial differences between hukouand non-hukou migrants in other socioeco-nomic characteristics. Hukou interprovincialmigrants tended to originate from urban areas,had a highly skewed share of the college-educated, and were employed in higher-skilled jobs, while non-hukou migrants weremostly from rural areas with much lower

educational attainment. They were also mostlyin occupations with lower skill levels. In job-related migration, hukou migrants tended tomove through government and formal chan-nels, while non-hukou migrants relied on theirown, often informal, channels for jobs. Inlabour migration, except for return ¯ows ofthose who migrated to frontier regions in the1950s and 1960s, most hukou migration wasmuch shorter in distance. Non-hukou labourmigration, on the other hand, contained bothlong-distance and short-distance moves.We then subjected our data to statistical tests

based on a place-to-place migration model. Weregressed the different migration rates by typewith both the origin and destination factors,and, based on statistical analysis, we haveidenti®ed the differential effect of the samevariables on different types of migration. Thisis most clearly shown in the comparisonbetween hukou migration and non-hukou mi-gration (including the subtype of rural labourmigration). While both of them were deterredby distance and moved to coastal provinceswith high rates of foreign investment, thedegrees of impact were not the same. Foreigninvestment, which is closely related to thecreation of large numbers of low-skilled jobs inChina, had a far greater impact in generatingnon-hukou migration. As predicted, rural la-bour migrants moved from provinces withhigh population pressure to those that weremore favourably endowed, in line with neo-classical formulations. The data examined alsoshow that non-hukou migration and rurallabour migration are consistent with net-worked migration hypotheses. Hukou migra-tion, however, displayed very differentresponses. It was not tied to the migrationstock, and the directions of ¯ows were quitethe opposite. This suggests the strong like-lihood of a different set of factors at work.Based on the detailed analysis of the two typesof migrants, this paper sheds some light on thebroad structure of Chinese internal migration,migrant behaviours and their conditioningfactors in the transitional era. Our analysisillustrates that in the late 1980s the hukousystem remained a relatively powerful institu-tion in structuring migration. The paper alsodemonstrates the usefulness of existing migra-tion theories in China when the subject of the



analysis is properly disaggregated in a re-search design that takes account of an im-portant dimension of Chinese society. As thenon-hukou or market-related component in-creases in Chinese migration, one can expectthat theories based on market economies willbecome increasingly relevant to China.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge thesupport provided by the US National ScienceFoundation (SBR-9618500), the Henry LuceFoundation, and the Center for Studies ofDemography and Ecology, University ofWashington. An earlier version of this paperwas presented at the `Migration in Contem-porary China' Workshop in December 1998 atUCLA, Los Angeles. We are grateful for thecomments and suggestions of Dorothy Solin-ger, Denise Hare, Wang Feng, Cindy Fan, andtwo anonymous referees, and for the carto-graphic assistance of Alana Boland and Xiao-hong Hou.

NOTES

(1) In that era, migration was seen primarily as atool used by the state to accomplish speci®cgoals of socialist economic development. Mi-gration was presumably in accordance withstate plans and done through mechanisms oflabour planning and household registration,and it was not a subject for the public or evenacademics to discuss.

(2) In China, of®cially, only hukou migration isconsidered as qianyi (`migration'); the rest ismerely renkou liudong (population movementor `¯oating'). The term implies an expectedtemporariness; the transients are not supposedto (and legally should not) stay in the destina-tion permanently, and they are often termed astemporary migrants, although many of themmay stay or have stayed in the destination foryears. Non-hukoumigration also includes someshort-term movement (visiting, circulation,and commuting). As will be explained later,our analysis excludes commuters, visitors, andother short-term migrants, partly due to thelack of data.

(3) We have included `study or training' in thiscategory. Most students in this category wouldreceive job assignments upon graduation.

(4) Appendix 1 maps the names of all theprovincial-level units in mainland China as of1990.

(5) This is a conventional geographical delinea-tion commonly used: Èastern' refers to Hei-longjiang, Jinin, Liaoning, Beijing, Tianjin,Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang,Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan;`Central' includes Nei Mongol, Shanxi, Henan,Anhui, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi; and`Western' refers to Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu,Ningxia, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnanand Tibet

(6) From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, largenumbers of educated urban youths, especiallyin the coastal provinces, were resettled in thecountryside and in frontier provinces undervarious government-sponsored programmes,including the rustication movements. Many ofthese people returned to their home towns inthe late 1970s and the late 1980s.

(7) The model can be easily derived from thegravity model, Mij = (Pi Pj)/Dij (see Schultz,1982).

(8) Migration from region i to region j can be seenas one possibility among a group of mutuallyexclusive, discrete alternatives, speci®ed in thefollowing logistic model:

Pij � e2ij=�e 2ij

where �Pij � 1 and

Zij � �� 1 lnPi � �2 lnPj � ��m lnXmi

� � n lnXnj � � lnDij

therefore ln�Pij=Pii� � �� 1 lnPi � �2 lnPj

� ��m lnXmi � � n lnXnj � � lnDij

Since Pii (stayer) is generally much larger thanPij (mover from i to j) and its variation is muchsmaller than that of Pij, we may replace theodds ratio of moving from i to j over non-migration (Pij /Pii) by gross migration ratefrom i to j (Mij), which leads us back to theequation (1) (Fields, 1982). This procedureshows that the double logarithmic modelunder certain circumstances is a good approx-imation to the logistic model (see Schultz,1982).

(9) A potential problem is that migration is part ofpopulation increase, so there tends to besimultaneous bias in migration models usingpopulation size as an independent variable(Fields, 1982). This should not be a problem forChinese migration since the relative size ofChinese migration is very small, with grossout-migration accounting for only about 1% ofthe total population.

(10) Hainan was not a province in 1985. In order tomaintain data consistency with other vari-ables, Hainan was included in Guangdong inthe regression analysis. Data on migration to



Tibet were not collected in the 1990 Censusand Tibet was excluded from our analysis.

(11) Finally, to illustrate the usefulness of adisaggregated approach in understanding thecomplexity of the Chinese migration system,we have also run a regression model (modelÀll') using exactly the same variables forinterprovincial migration as the hukou andnon-hukou migration combined. For thosevariables that have same sign for hukou andnon-hukou migrations, the Àll' model is con-sistent, although the values of the coef®cientsmay change. For example, the coef®cient ofFDI for Àll' migration lies between non-hukouand hukou migrations. But for those variableswith opposite signs, the aggregated modelde®nitely blurs the differences between dis-aggregated migration types and dilutes theresults. Thus, for instance, the two migrationcircuits revealed by the land±labour ratios arereplaced by a single set of contradictoryresults, which show that migrants came fromand also went to also less populated provinces.The non-signi®cant `migration stock' coef®-cient also conceals the important role of themigration network in rural labour migration.In short, the vast differences between hukouand non-hukou migrations demand a disaggre-gated approach. The aggregated model cannotexplain the migration patterns satisfactorily,and leave many complexities in the processesundetected.

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Appendix 1. Provincial level units in mainland China in 1990.

Zero-order correlations between migration rates and independent variables.

Migration types

Hukou Non-hukou Rural labour All

Distance from i to j (Dij) ÿ0.390** ÿ0.352** ÿ0.345** ÿ0.430**Origin population (Pi) ÿ0.334** ÿ0.045 ÿ0.033 ÿ0.125**Destination population (Pj) 0.008 ÿ0.077 0.002 ÿ0.060Agricultural share at j (Aj) ÿ0.194** 0.374** 0.352** 0.332**Agricultural share at i (Ai) ÿ0.171** ÿ0.069** ÿ0.109** 0.022Consumption per capita at j (Cj) 0.190** 0.055** 0.180** ÿ0.029Consumption per capita at i (Ci) 0.177** ÿ0.259** ÿ0.214** ÿ0.264**Foreign direct investment (Pj) 0.249** 0.460** 0.529** 0.414**Migration stock (Mj) 0.133** 0.265** 0.297** 0.248**Land-labour ratio at i (LLi) 0.349** ÿ0.015** ÿ0.212** 0.150**Land-labour ratio at j (LLj) ÿ0.139** ÿ0.195** ÿ0.352** ÿ0.178**Note:

** Signi®cant at 0.01 level.

APPENDIX 2



Documents

Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5 Hukou and Non-hukou Migrations in ...courses.washington.edu/chinageo/CLY-IJPG99.pdf · hukou migrants. They are most likely to end up in the bottom rungs of