China's hukou system stands in the way of its dream of prosperity
Kam Wing Chan says China's attempt to build a new class of urban consumers will falter unless it also dismantles the rigid household registration system that keeps migrants poor
Dreams are in vogue in mainland China. During a widely publicised tour of Shenzhen, the new head of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping , called for the realisation of the "Chinese dream" - a great national revival. Right after that, the Chinese character meng (dream) was voted "character of the year" in an online poll of 50,000 people.
The new year also began with a political storm over a censored article dreaming of Chinese constitutional reform. Whether those dreams are more like a fantasy than realistic hope remains to be seen.
As China enters the urban age (more than half its population now lives in towns and cities), a critical part of the Chinese dream is the "urban dream" - the promotion of urbanisation to generate household consumption to put the economy on a sustainable footing. This would steer China away from the current export- and investment-driven growth model, which is now considered, even by the government, as "unbalanced" and "unsustainable".
Urbanisation, when done right, would better shield the economy from possible blackmail by foreign, particularly Western, protectionists and the wasteful drag from an orgy of construction.
Premier-designate Li Keqiang has championed urbanisation for years. Some media are excited by his talk of a new type of urbanisation, though specifics are scant. Can he do it right and help China reach its urban dream?
Some say China is already on the way to fulfilling the dream, just counting the number of people relocated to cities and the tens of thousands of new buildings erected and roads built in recent years.