China is said to have 500 riots, collective protests, and strikes a day. According to Minxin Pei, this has quadrupled from a decade ago.
Much of this discontent stems from Chinese policies that restrict individual freedoms. Some of these are unique to China, and some are more draconian than others.
As China's 'fifth generation' of Communist Party leaders takes the helm, we put together a few extremely restrictive policies that policymakers should consider reforming. Some of these are believed to be on top of Beijing's reform agenda.
The household registration system limits property ownership and benefits to Chinese citizens
China's Hukou system, a household registration system that comes with benefits like health care, pension, and free education among others, has been a source of tremendous frustration among the Chinese.
That's because the Hukou benefits are only available to people if they continue to live in the city or village in which they were born. About 240 million people reportedly do not live in their place of birth.
Earlier this year, the government encouraged rural residents to apply for Hukou in small cities if they had held a job in that city for a few years and rented an apartment there. Applying for Hukou in big cities like Beijing is much harder.
But these reforms are moving at a very slow pace, and the Hukou system ends up limiting consumption and property ownership. Its ability to control the movement of people from one place to another has also helped create a two-tier urban-rural divide.
Land laws have made farming inefficient and are hurting the urbanization rate
Farmland was collectivized in China under chairman Mao. In the post-Mao era, policymakers pushed reforms that returned land to a family oriented management structure, but the land continued to be owned at the village level by collectives.
China has faced massive protests whenever land has been illegally seized from farmers and sold to raise revenue.
Moreover, the inability to own and mortgage land acts as a disincentive to farmers to invest in their land, while simultaneously limiting their ability to do so.
Controversial labor camps allow for the imprisonment for up to four years without trial
People in China can be imprisoned without trial for up to four years through a system called 'laoding jiaoyang' or re-education through labor.
These labor camps have been around since the 1950s when the communist party would imprison dissenters. But they are now used to imprison everyone from petty thieves, prostitutes, and drug users.
The demand for reforms to this system gained some traction when a mother was sentenced to 18 months without trial for demanding a harsher punishment for men who had abducted her 7-year old daughter was raped her, and forced her into prostitution.
The government agreed to reform these labor camps last month but has yet to clarify what that means.
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