Re-discussion on China’s hukou and Indian caste
China Daily Global Online News: In recent years, the rapid economic development of China and India has attracted worldwide attention. In fact, apart from cultural, historical and political differences, the development of China and India has many parallel characteristics, especially institutional social inequality. Recently, two news stories that happened almost simultaneously in the two countries once again showed this parallel phenomenon.
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, March 29: "The Ministry of Public Security of China held a national conference on public security management on the 29th, and one of the topics of the conference was to discuss the establishment of a unified household registration system in urban and rural areas, which means that the issue of canceling the dual household registration system in agriculture and non-agriculture that has been widely concerned in recent years is expected to be solved."
On the same day, The New York Times reported from New Delhi that an important affirmative action bill aimed at increasing and guaranteeing the quota of lower castes in Indian universities was shelved by the Supreme Court of India. This can be said to be a major setback for successive governments since India’s independence to eliminate the caste system, a social inequality.
The caste system represents the basic teachings of Hinduism, which was originally the need for Aryans to maintain their dominant position after conquering the South Asian subcontinent. However, after thousands of years, it has become a deep-rooted social bad habit. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, there are two systems that cause hereditary inequality, but they are "new things", "political caste" divided according to family background, and China’s unprecedented "economic caste" represented by urban and rural hukou.
These two modern caste systems first hit the most creative strata in China society: urban intellectuals and the rural proletariat. The former victim was exposed through "anti-Rightism" and "Cultural Revolution", but the latter has so far lacked the attention of scholars. One of Deng Xiaoping’s great historical achievements is to completely get rid of the "political caste" based on family composition, and the resulting liberation of talents has become an important reason for China’s economic take-off. However, the "economic caste" represented by urban and rural hukou has been postponed to this day, which not only continues to hinder the creation of a "harmonious society" and economic development, but also leads to the absurd social inequality of "the same life but different prices".
As Singaporean Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew pointed out in an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel in the summer of 2005, China, instead of Japan or other Asian countries, would have become the top power in Asia long ago if it had not taken the detour of the "Cultural Revolution", instead of causing international shock due to the "rise of China" today. This is really the golden advice of a generation of politicians.
If you don’t give advice in the past, you can catch up with others. For India and China, it is not only a necessary prerequisite to create a harmonious society, but also a key factor to decide who will win the development competition in the end. Especially in China, where the per capita natural resources are low, the difference between urban and rural hukou is a huge obstacle to the extensive development of human resources. It is expected that the recent national conference on public security management in Beijing will accelerate the early demise of the modern caste system in China. (Excerpted from Lianhe Zaobao, this newspaper has abridged)
(Source: Southern Newspaper Group Author: Yu Shiyu)
