After 63 Years, China Rethinks Strict Residency Rules

Posted March 5, 2021

External Article: Voice of America

Fei-Ling Wang, professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was quoted in the article "After 63 Years, China Rethinks Strict Residency Rules," published March 5, 2021 in Voice of America.

The article explores policy changes in China that loosen the restrictions imposed upon residents that wanted to move from rural to urban areas. Wang, who has studied the "hukou" policy extensively, spoke to the change's potential impact on the labor market.

Excerpt:

Fei-Ling Wang, a professor of international affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology and the author of “Organization Through Division and Exclusion: China’s Hukou System,” told Sixth Tone, a state-owned English-language online magazine based in Shanghai, that the removal of settlement restrictions was “a bold step in the right direction to ease restrictions of labor mobility.”

“It is very much in line with the general trend of localization of the hukou administration, signaling a progressive relaxation of the control of domestic migration and a welcome effort of reducing the urban-rural barriers, at least within a province,” he said.

Full article.