大多数“棒棒们”生在重庆周边的山村(重庆包括第二次世界大战时作为中国首都的中心城镇区域,以及一片和苏格兰差不多大的内陆地区,受城镇管辖)。从共产党当权4年后的1953年起,中国的居民被分为两大类,城镇居民和农村居民,这样的划分并不是根据人们居住的地理位置,而是依据世袭传统。或许“棒棒们”将穷其一生在重庆街头讨生活,但最终他们的户口本上还是清清楚楚地印着不变的身份-“农村居民”。
户籍制度的确立最初是为了限制农村人口流入城市。重庆“棒棒们”是受限制目标之一。共产党早年在重庆执政时曾把成千上万“游民”(毛泽东曾说游民“缺乏建设性”)集中起来,遣送他们到营地劳动。这些游民忍受着繁重的劳动,后来有返回原来的乡村定居。
过去30多年来工业的飞速增长需要大量农村剩余劳动力,移民壁垒因此被逐渐拆除,然而,户口依旧意味着太多东西的门槛,从教育、医疗、住房到职业及社会保险金等公共福利。身份被划为农民通常意味着只能得到二等公民的待遇。政府官员近几年常说要“改革”户籍制度。改革措施也的确使获得城市居民身份更容易了,至少在小型城市是这样。但去年下半年,类似的官方说辞似乎变得更加信誓旦旦。决策者们开始担心国家为应对全球金融危机而慷慨解囊的政府刺激消费政策后劲不足。他们相信户籍改革或许有助于改善城乡人口流动现状,同时提振中国眼下急需释放的农村消费者购买力。
今年3月初,国内11家报纸(实际是13家,其中两家临阵退出了)跨越重重阻隔,联合发表了一篇重要社论。社论提请参加全国人民代表大会的代表们敦促中央尽快废除现行的户籍制度,加速户籍改革。“我们希望”,该社论写道,“僵化的户籍制度,能终于我们这一代人,让下一代人真正享有自由、民主、平等的宪法赋予之神圣权利!” 自1989年之后,还没有如此多家报纸同时联合发出如此强烈的呼吁。
社论认为“可喜”的变化已经和改革一起发生,但户籍这一“无形而又沉重的枷锁”仍困住无数疲于奔命的人们。改革或许能够为经济注入“更多的活力”,并减少老龄化人口带来的负面影响。
政府对这些报刊媒体的鲁莽举动似乎颇为不满。《经济观察报》前任副总编辑张宏由于参与编写这则社论而丢掉了职务(尽管他仍被准许继续工作)。社论在报社网站登载数小时后就消失了。户籍改革固然得到支持,但政府不想让媒体挑起过多对此问题的争论。
城市人口从户籍制度中获益,但那些在城市之间频繁流动的城镇居民却苦不堪言。2003年,一位有大学文化程度的移民(孙志刚,译者注)因未能提供警方要求的身份证明而被拘留,之后被打致死。此后,国内一些报刊纷纷呼吁改革。此轮风波使得准许警方以行为不端为由扣留居民并以类似理由驱逐居民的规定(收留遣送条例,译者注)被废除。
这一次,据一位参与社论撰写的编辑说,影响正好相反。在众多党选出的参加全国人民代表大会的代表中,户籍制度改革成了“禁忌话题”。3月份,温家宝总理在会上表明中央已经决定稳妥地推进户籍制度改革,并重申将进一步松动在城镇和小型城市的落户相关要求,但未透露具体细节。
户籍改革的艰巨和复杂性让政府踌躇不前。从农村土地所有权体制到公共服务融资,改革无疑将对经济发展产生一系列重大影响。但沿用过时的户籍制度无疑将导致更多危害。移民潮的涌入让各个地方政府措手不及。预算压力使他们很难倾囊扶助外来人口。登记在册的城镇居民对此也没有什么积极性。很少有人愿意他们的子女与被认为是乡下佬的农村孩子一起上课。
寒冬中的教室
无论在城镇还是农村,中国孩子本应享有免费的九年义务教育,但这对农村的流动子弟来说却可望而不可及。与其他大城市一样,在北京,上百所私立学校雨后春笋般冒出来接纳外来务工人员的孩子。在北京城南的向阳希望学校,一年的学费是1100元(约165美元):这对城里人来说是小菜一碟,但却相当于许多农民工7周的收入。取暖费要另交,孩子们抱怨说冬天教室里非常冷。一位家长说她准备把孩子送回村里,因为那里的条件更好。
当地政府试图让罗超闭嘴。罗超是北京东北部一所农民工子弟学校的校长(他自己也是移民)。他说地方官员今年2月春节前告诉他,为给一个开发项目腾地方,学校要被拆除,春节假期后将停止办学。为了防止他们串联把事情闹大,官员们扣留了罗校长和一位来自另一所农民工子弟学校的教师。官员们承诺将为孩子们找新校址,但罗校长说,当地政府办的学校几乎不可能容纳所有的农民工子女。
在教育上,户籍制度的荒诞之处随处可见。虽然被冠以“农村人口”之名,农村流动人口的子女通常并未在农村生活,只是每年农历新年随父母回家探亲。这些孩子在城里的学校没有被充分接纳,有些小学生被迫辍学,还有一些到了上中学的年龄也不得不继续呆在小学就读。实际上,数百万更多的农民工子女仍旧留在农村就学,由父母之外的其他亲人照料。如果他们随父母迁到城市,他们很可能不能在市里参加中考,而是必须回到原登记居住地的农村。
从上世纪90年代晚期以前,孩子的户口随其母亲的户口。这意味着一个在北京长大的孩子,即使父亲是北京居民,他/她也得回到母亲的户口所在地参加考试。户口仍在很大程度上影响学生进入名牌大学的机会,这些大学在每个省份都有招生定额。北京、上海这样的正省级直辖市获得的定额通常不成比例地高。这种特权催生了活跃的高价买卖城镇户口的黑市。
近年来试图松动户口相关规定的举措大多缺乏诚意。重庆去年承诺为具有高中文化、愿意放弃自有土地耕种权的农村居民提供城镇户口。此类附带条件往往很难被满足。上海去年高调宣布,在城市工作七年、并按规定缴税及社会保险的人士符合城镇户口申请条件。但农村移民在城里的工作往往没有正式合同,更不用说登记纳税或支付福利金。据国内媒体报道,百万上海农民工中只有大概3000人符合获取城镇户口的资格。5月1日,广东省会、农民工聚居地广州试图消除农村户口所带来的种种歧视,但收效甚微。北京迟迟不见行动。一位持有上海城镇户口、在北京居住了十多年的居民说他至今无法登记成为北京居民。
明月照我行
远在重庆的“棒棒们”并不稀奇。几位被问及户口问题的“棒棒”说就算政府提供户口,他们对拥有城镇户口也不抱什么幻想。他们的冷漠态度反映了一个问题。2007年,重庆市(包括城镇和其他内陆地区)和距四川省西北部340公里(约210英里)的成都被中央政府选为推行旨在平衡城乡发展的改革试点。这或许意味着两点:农民工将变成名副其实的城镇居民;与此同时,大片留下的土地所产生的巨大财富将被充分开发。
回头看,这是一段相当漫长的征程。尽管过去20多年大量农村居民纷纷涌入城市(这是人类历史上最大规模的人口流动-迄今涉及约1亿5000万人,预计未来二三十年还将涉及约3亿人),中国并未从如此迅猛的城市化进程中享受到太多益处。这一点,任何在中国农历新年期间安排旅行的人恐怕都略窥一二。
由于仍然享有农村土地集体所有权并且可以继续种地,很多在城市打拼的农民工依旧与他们曾经赖以为生的乡村保持着紧密的联系。每逢春节,上千万农民工迫不及待地返乡,与留守农田的双亲和子女共度佳节。人民大学最近一项调查显示,大约三分之一20多岁的年轻农民工盼望在家乡而非城里盖上属于自己的房子。他们中只有7%的人视自己为城里人。另一项近期公布在党报上的调查则发现将近30%的农民工计划最终回归家乡。
重庆的“棒棒们”说维持现状的原因还有很多。中国的计划生育政策在农村执行得似乎更为灵活,一家往往有两个孩子。农村的医疗服务尚停留在相对初级的阶段。近年来政府已引入相关议程,为缴纳定额保险年费(较城镇保险相对便宜)的农村住户提供补贴医疗。“棒棒们”得回到各自的家乡才能享受到补贴医疗。而与其他半数中国农民工一样,他们在其户口所在省份工作,返乡(看病)似乎还是可能的。
农民工无法成功融入城市生活对中国经济也产生了很大影响。在特大城市中,不断膨胀的资产价格使极少人有幸攀上自有住房的高枝。在规模较小的城镇,得到住房的机会大一些,但由于无法出售耕地或宅基地,很多农民买不起房子。实际上,长期依附农村土地可能会错失释放农村消费潜力的绝佳机会,也阻碍了整合小块耕地、组建拥有更高效率的大规模农场经营模式的发展。
在作为2012年新一届国家领导人候选者之一的薄熙来的领导下,重庆率先迈开改革步伐。2008年底,该市在市中心新建的办公楼四层设立了“农村土地交易所”。该所总裁董建国(重庆国土局的高级官员)将土地交易机制与碳排放交易市场相比较。运用减少用于房屋或厂房修建的土地使用或将土地复垦为耕地等规划形式,农村宅基地和集体建设用地将以地票的形式自由交易。这些地票将被卖给企图动用农地的城市开发商,这些农地通常远离市区。这项举措旨在防止耕地进一步流失。
重庆并不是唯一实行此类措施的试点,但一直在省一级上贯彻此类政策。至今为止,农村土地交易所共举办11场拍卖会,交易农业用地1200公顷(约2970亩),筹集资金19万亿元。这些资金被用于支持复垦新农地并补偿那些不愿继续种田且打算为留在农村的同伴修建小区房的民众。标准渣打银行经济学家史提芬·格林最近在一份报告中指出,尽管仍然缺乏政府对改革的基础性支持,此类土地交易机制的确有助于使部分城镇土地市场创造的财富外溢到农村地区。
目前尚有两大阻力制约农村经济增长。其中之一当属模糊定义的土地所有权。与可以自由交易的国有城镇土地不同,农业用地被定义为“集体”共有。究竟是政府还是农民对土地享有集体所有权至今尚无定论。虽然不屑于印度的城市贫民窟现象,但官员们还是担心一旦赋予农民土地交易权,他们便可能脱离与农村原有的联系,以致出现像孟买那样的贫民窟。
土地改革何去何从,国内的学者们意见不一。反对农村土地改革的人认为,全球金融危机已经印证了他们的观点:由于出口行业紧缩,数百万农民工在城市失去了工作,但他们在老家有自己的土地,他们得以回家继续种田,并未引起社会混乱。在重庆,地票交易中心的工作人员十分紧张,他们觉得任何哪怕对小心翼翼的土地交易尝试的公众置疑都可能产生与预期相反的影响。鉴于此,他们对酝酿之中的进一步计划-比如试运行农村土地信用抵押贷款业务-更没有太大的把握。取消抵押贷款赎回权这一新型运作机制的出现可能对农村稳定造成的任何负面影响恐怕是保守派最不愿看到的。
养活人口的重担
制约农村经济增长的另一大阻力在于中国政府长期以来对国内粮食出产不足的担忧。目前,中央规定保留至少1亿2千万公顷耕地以确保粮食产出,但官方透露这一最低阀值还有可能进一步降低。一些国内专家指出该基准制定武断,规模效应将极大地提高粮食产量,同时国家可以更多地利用全球粮食市场来补充不足。但1959年到1961年影响上亿万人的三年饥荒的印记历历在目,过于依赖进口或将威胁国家粮食安全的考量也使官员们坚持咬紧目前的耕地面积基准。这意味着即使土地交易自由化,农民们(或持农村户口的农民工)仍然入不敷出。
重庆大学的蒲勇健教授感叹中央没能给重庆足够的改革尝试空间。他指出,2007年重庆被要求进行试点改革其时,原本期待能与深圳那样的城市享有同样的自由。尽管被保守派嗤之以鼻,毗邻香港的深圳在上世纪八、九十年代甚至能够设立股票交易市场。“重庆没有得到深圳那样的权力,为什么还叫新特区呢?”蒲教授说道。
显然,更彻底改革的基础至少已经开始确立。政府已开始在全国范围内向农村居民发放明确其耕种土地及所有财产的证书。如果政府最终决定鼓励发展农村产权市场,这类证书很可能将被用以证明财产所有权。去年12月,政府宣布力争在3年内完成该任务。由于尚须定义几十年来一直混淆不清的边界问题,这将是艰巨的任务。
作为改革先行者的重庆市希望明年内完成证书发放。但在散步重庆的广袤山村,改革的推进依旧迟缓。深处重庆市区东北重山峻岭中的双溪村被当地官员誉为改革的开路先锋。该村鼓励民众把自己的宅基地使用权转给一家奶制品集团,该集团用村民的耕地生产饲料。除了少数十几户人家,其他村民都同意了。交换条件是公司支付村民保底租金。
双溪村党支书李龙惠(音译)看得更远。村民被劝说从独栋住所搬进三层小区房后,全村恢复了33公顷土地(约占总面积的10%)。李女士希望今后地票市场能纳入这类交易,但指出现在的价格仍然偏低。截至目前,双溪村的村民住房改建、新校舍修建以及为老人提供的休闲场所兴建均得到当地政府的财政支持。李女士认为,有了更多类似的资金来源,或许能把土地承包经营权和使用权流转给更多工业项目。但在目前看来,这似乎还很遥远。
英文原文:
Invisible and heavy shackles(May 6th 2010 | CHONGQING;From The Economist print edition)
Until China breaks down the barriers between town and countryside, it cannot unleash the buying power of its people—or keep its economy booming
ON THE hilly streets of Chongqing, men with thick bamboo poles loiter for customers who will pay them to carry loads. The “stick men”, as they are called, hang the items from either end of the poles and heave them up over their shoulders. In a city where the Communist Party chief, Bo Xilai, likes to sing old revolutionary songs, these workers should be hymned as heroes. Yet few of them are even classed as citizens of the city where they live.
Most of the stick men were born in the countryside around Chongqing. (The name covers both the urban centre that served as China’s capital in the second world war, and a hinterland, the size of Scotland, which the city administers.) Since 1953, shortly after the Communists came to power, Chinese citizens have been divided into two strata, urban and rural, not according to where they live but on a hereditary basis. The stick men may have spent all their working lives on the streets of Chongqing, but their household registration papers call them “agricultural”.
The registration system (hukou, in Chinese) was originally intended to stop rural migrants flowing into the cities. Stick men were among the targets. In the early days of Communist rule in Chongqing the authorities rounded up thousands of “vagrants” and sent them to camps (vagrants, said Mao Zedong, “lack constructive qualities”). There they endured forced labour before being packed back to their villages.
Rapid industrial growth over the past three decades has required tearing down migration barriers to exploit the countryside’s huge labour surplus. Hukou, however, still counts for a lot, from access to education, health care and housing to compensation payouts. To be classified as a peasant often means being treated as a second-class citizen. Officials in recent years have frequently talked about “reforming” the system. They have made it easier to acquire urban citizenship, in smaller cities at least. But since late last year the official rhetoric has become more urgent. Policymakers have begun to worry that the country’s massive stimulus spending in response to the global financial crisis could run out of steam. Hukou reform, they believe, could boost rural-urban migration and with it the consumer spending China needs.
In early March 11 Chinese newspapers (it would have been 13, had not two bottled out) defied party strictures and teamed together to publish an extraordinary joint editorial. It called on China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), which was then about to hold its annual meeting, to urge the government to scrap the hukou system as soon as possible. “We hope”, it said, “that a bad policy we have suffered for decades will end with our generation, and allow the next generation to truly enjoy the sacred rights of freedom, democracy and equality bestowed by the constitution.” Not since the Tiananmen uprising in 1989 had so many newspapers simultaneously cast aside the restraints imposed by the Communist Party’s mighty Propaganda Department, which micromanages China’s media output.
The editorial said that “gratifying” progress had already been made with reform, but the system’s “invisible and heavy shackles” were still causing distress. Reform could inject “more dynamism” into the economy and help counter the effects of an ageing population.
Party leaders resented the newspapers’ boldness. Zhang Hong, a deputy chief editor of the Economic Observer, a weekly newspaper, was stripped of his title (though allowed to keep working) for his role in organising the editorial. Within a couple of hours of its appearance on newspaper websites, the authorities ordered its removal. Hukou reform was fine, but the government did not want to be hassled.
Urban citizens benefit from the hukou system, but those who migrate between cities are also irked by it. In 2003 some Chinese newspapers, independently of one another, pressed for reform after a college-educated migrant was detained by police for failing to produce a required identity document, and was beaten to death. The outcry led to the scrapping of regulations that allowed the police to detain people and deport them to their home towns for similar misdemeanours.
This time, says an editor involved in the hukou editorial, the impact was the opposite. Among many of the party-picked delegates to the NPC, he says, hukou reform became “a taboo topic”. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, told the session in March that the government would carry out reforms and repeated that requirements would be relaxed in towns and smaller cities. But he offered few details.
The complexity of hukou reform daunts Chinese leaders. It would have a huge impact on crucial aspects of the economy, from the system of land ownership in the countryside to the financing of public services. But the downsides of an unreformed system are much more obvious. The influx of migrants has caught local governments badly unprepared. Budget pressures have made them highly reluctant to spend money on helping the incomers. Registered urban residents are none too keen either. Few want their children sharing classes with kids they regard as country bumpkins.
In a cold classroom
In urban and rural China alike, the first nine years of schooling are supposed to be free. But not for rural migrants. In Beijing, as in other big cities, hundreds of privately run schools have sprung up in recent years to cater for them. At the Xiangyang Hope School in Huangcun township on the southern edge of the capital, the basic fee is 1,100 yuan ($165) a year: a snip for many urban residents, but the equivalent of several weeks’ wages for many migrants. There is an extra charge for heating; children complain that they are cold in the bitter winters. One parent says she is preparing to take her child back to her village, because conditions are better there.
The authorities have tried to muzzle the principal, Luo Chao (a migrant himself). Mr Luo was until recently the headmaster of another school to the north-east of Beijing. He says local officials told him just before the lunar new year holiday in February that the school would be demolished to make way for a private development project, and could not reopen after the break. Officials briefly detained Mr Luo and the head teacher of another condemned migrants’ school to prevent them petitioning higher authorities. Officials promised that the children would be found new places, but Mr Luo says there is no way that the local government-run school would have enough room for them.
In education, the hukou system’s absurdity is particularly glaring. Migrant children, though classified as “agricultural”, usually have no more than one brief exposure to rural life every year when they are taken to their parents’ home towns for the lunar new year festivities. School places in urban areas are so scarce that some pupils will drop out and others, though old enough for secondary school, will have to stay in primary classes. Tens of millions of children of migrant workers are, in effect, forced to stay in the countryside for schooling, looked after by other relatives. If they do move to urban areas with their parents, they may not sit exams for senior high school in the city where they live. They must return to their place of registration.
Until the late 1990s, a child’s hukou could only follow its mother’s. This meant that even a child who grew up in Beijing with a father registered as a Beijing citizen might have to travel hundreds of miles to sit the exam in his mother’s registered home town. Hukou can still affect a student’s chances of getting into top universities, for which each province has a quota of places. The quotas for provincial-level cities like Beijing and Shanghai are disproportionately large. Such privileges fuel a lively black market in highly priced hukous of favoured cities.
The relaxation of hukou rules in recent years has been half-hearted. Chongqing last year offered urban hukou to any rural resident who had graduated from senior high school and who was prepared to give up his entitlement to farm a plot of land and own a village homestead. Those are big provisos. Shanghai announced with fanfare last year that seven years’ work in the city—along with the required tax and social-security payments—would entitle a resident to hukou. But rural migrants often work without contracts and do not pay tax or contribute to welfare funds; only 3,000 of Shanghai’s millions of migrant workers would qualify, said Chinese press reports. On May 1st Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province and a magnet for migrants, began phasing out the “agricultural” distinction in its hukou documents, but the effect of this is mostly cosmetic. Beijing has been among the slowest to change. One Shanghai urban hukou-holder who has lived in Beijing for well over a decade says he still cannot get registered there.
Moving with the moon
The stick men of Chongqing are certainly not impressed. Several, when asked, said they had no desire to acquire urban hukou, even if it were offered. Their indifference poses a problem. In 2007 Chongqing municipality (the city plus its vast hinterland) and the city of Chengdu, 340km (210 miles) to the north-west in Sichuan Province, were chosen by the central government to pioneer reforms aimed at rebalancing urban and rural development. This would involve turning migrants into genuine urban citizens and exploiting the untapped value of the land left behind.
This was long overdue. For all the hoopla created by the massive city-bound migration of rural residents in the past two decades (the biggest such shift in human history, with 150m moving so far and another 300m predicted to do so in the next 20-30 years), China has failed to reap the full benefits of this rapid urbanisation. Anyone who tries to travel in China around the lunar new year holiday will have an inkling of the problem.
Because they still have rights to a rural homestead and to farm a plot of land, many rural hukou-holders maintain a vital link with the countryside even after they move. Come the new year, millions rush back to their villages to celebrate with elderly relatives and children left behind on the farm. A recent survey by Renmin University in Beijing found that about a third of migrants in their 20s aspired to build a house in their home village rather than buy one in a city. Only 7% of them identified themselves as city people. Another survey recently quoted in a party journal said that nearly 30% of migrants planned eventually to return to their villages.
Chongqing’s stick men say there are other good reasons for preserving the status quo. China’s one-child policy is more relaxed in the countryside, where two-child families are common. Rural health care is rudimentary, but a scheme introduced in recent years provides subsidised treatment for rural hukou-holders who make a small annual contribution (cheaper than urban insurance). The stick men have to return to their villages for it, but, in common with around half of China’s migrants, they work in the province of their hukou, and the journey is feasible.
The poor integration of China’s rural migrants into city life has big implications for the economy. In the largest cities, where property prices are soaring, few could even dream of getting on to the housing ladder. In smaller urban areas they would stand a better chance, but since they cannot sell the land they farm or even their own houses, many cannot afford it. In effect, their rural land entitlements lock up what could be a huge new source of spending power. They also prevent the consolidation of tiny plots into more efficient farms.
Chongqing, whose leader, Mr Bo, is widely expected to be a star of the new generation of leaders due to take over in 2012, has gone for easy solutions first. In late 2008 it set up a “country land exchange institute” on the fourth floor of a new office building in the city centre. Dong Jianguo, its president (and a senior Chongqing land official), describes this as something like a market for trading carbon emissions. By cutting the amount of land used for building homes or factories and converting it into new farmland, villages can gain credits known as dipiao, or land tickets. These can then be sold to urban developers who want to build on other patches of farmland, usually far away on the city periphery. The aim is to ensure no net loss of tillable fields.
Chongqing is not the only place trying this out, but it is doing so on a provincial scale. Eleven auctions held so far at the exchange have raised nearly 1.9 billion yuan for dipiao equivalent to 1,200 hectares (2,970 acres) of farmland. The money has been spent on repaying villages for the cost of creating new farmland, compensating those who do not want to stay and building new, more condensed housing for those who do. Stephen Green of Standard Chartered Bank said in a recent report that the scheme, while falling well short of fundamental reform, had enabled some of the wealth created by the urban land market to trickle down to the countryside.
Two huge constraints impede the government’s efforts to liberate the countryside’s economic potential. The first is confusion over land-ownership. Unlike urban land, which is state-owned but freely traded, rural land is defined as “collectively” owned. It has never been made entirely clear whether officials, or peasants, control collective rights. Officials fear that giving peasants a right to trade their homes and farmland would cut the ties that bind rural hukou-holders to the countryside and lead to the creation of Mumbai-like slums. They sneer at India for its urban squalor.
Chinese scholars are bitterly divided over how to proceed. Opponents of rural land reform say the global financial crisis has proved their point: millions of migrant workers in the cities lost their jobs as export industries slumped, but because they had land to go back to there was no major unrest. In Chongqing, officials at the dipiao trading centre are nervous that any adverse publicity even about their cautious experiment might fuel a backlash. This would complicate their tentative plans for something more adventurous: trial runs of mortgaging rural homesteads. The possible impact of foreclosures on rural stability is the conservatives’ worst nightmare.
Mouths to feed
The other constraint is the Chinese government’s deep-rooted fear that domestically produced grain may be insufficient to feed the country. It has decreed that a minimum of 120m hectares of arable land be preserved for this, a “red line” that officials say is already close to being crossed. Some Chinese experts argue that the line is arbitrary, that efficiencies of scale could considerably boost output and that China could rely more on the global grain market to supplement its needs. But memories of a famine from 1959 to 1961 that killed millions of people, and a fear that relying on imports could threaten China’s security, make officials adamant that the line must not be breached. This means that even if land trading were to be liberalised, many peasants (or migrants with rural hukou) still could not cash in fully.
Pu Yongjian of Chongqing University laments that the central government has failed to give the municipality enough leeway to experiment. He says that in 2007, when Chongqing was instructed to carry out trial reforms, it expected to enjoy freedoms similar to those bestowed on the city of Shenzhen, next to Hong Kong, in the 1980s and 90s. Shenzhen was even able to set up a stockmarket, though party conservatives scorned it. “We haven’t got that kind of power, so what’s the point of calling it an experimental zone?” asks Mr Pu.
The groundwork, at least, for more radical change is at last being laid. A nationwide push has begun to issue rural households with certificates stating what land they farm and what residential property they occupy. These, potentially, could be used as proof of ownership should the government eventually decide to encourage a rural property market. The government said in December that it wanted the task to be completed within three years. It will be tough work, hampered by decades of haziness over where boundaries lie.
Chongqing municipality, having got an early start, hopes to finish handing out its certificates next year. But in rural Chongqing, change still seems slow. The village of Shuangxi in the hills north-east of Chongqing city has been designated by local officials as a reform trailblazer. Its peasants were encouraged to give up their land-use rights to a dairy company, which used the fields to produce fodder. All but a dozen households agreed, in return for a share of the rent paid by the company.
Li Longhui, Shuangxi’s party chief, wants to go further. By persuading the farmers to move from their freestanding homes into new three-storey apartment blocks, the village has recovered 33 hectares of land (10% of its total area). Ms Li would like to trade this on the dipiao market, but complains that the price is still too low. So far the local government has borne the cost of Shuangxi’s housing upgrade, its new school and the recreation area where elderly villagers dance to revolutionary songs. Recouping the money, says Ms Li, would mean selling village land for industrial use. That is still heretical.