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China's Hukou System: Markets, Migrants and Institutional Change . JASON YOUNG . Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan , 2013. xi + 205 pp. £95.00. ISBN 978-1-137-27730-5
Book Reviews
With the deepening of market-oriented reform in China, the household registration (hukou) system, which has successfully survived and adapted to rapid socioeconomic changes, is receiving increasing attention among scholars and policymakers. In his new book, Jason Young seeks to explore the relationships among markets, migrants and institutional arrangements within the hukou system, using theoretical analysis and case studies. Young argues that "migrants, enabled by the growth of the market economy, are a force for institutional change in China" (p. 21). The book employs new institutionalism as a theoretical framework to discuss how and why China's hukou system, which as a system of population management has experienced important changes to its formal institutional arrangements, has retained its overall continuity and plays a crucial role in shaping migration and settlement patterns. The four cases presented in this book provide valuable examples of how the hukou system has changed at both the national and local levels.
This book is divided into five chapters, bookended by an introduction that concisely outlines the book's aims - namely, to explore the practical functioning of China's hukou system, its adaption to the changing institutional environment and the complexity of the hukou reform - and a conclusion that restates the main findings and emphasizes "the significance of locating institutional change within the broader socioeconomic environment" (p. 7). The first chapter presents an overview of three politico-economic reforms - in agriculture, the state sector and regional planning - which, as Young believes, provide the impetus for internal migration from rural to urban areas and significantly impact on the functioning of China's hukou system. The chapter also explores the relationships among markets, migrants and institutional change. Chapter two provides a clear historical outline of the evolving hukou system in China. After examining different characteristics of the hukou system in China's pre-modern, Republican and Communist eras, the author finds an astonishing continuity and stability in the hukou system and concludes that it continues to serve as a...