Kam Wing Chan

China’s hukou reform remains a major challenge to domestic migrants in cities, World Bank Blogs, December 17, 2021. In observance of International Migrants Day, Dec 18. China’s rise as a global player in manufacturing is closely linked to its epic-scale internal migrant labor supply and its associated “semi-urbanization” strategy of the past four decades. The huge number of low-cost urban laborers who constitute the bulk of China’s “floating population” (liudong renkou) have helped keep the price of Chinese manufactures low and make them fiercely competitive in the world market. However,… Read more...

What the 2020 Chinese Census Tells Us about Progress in Hukou Reform, China Brief, July 2021. The People’s Republic of China recently published its seventh national ten-year 2020 Census results, which led to much discussion and commentary about the development implications of low population growth and a rapidly aging population. Fewer have noted insights that the 2020 Census has provided into the progress of China’s long-awaited reforms to its household registration system … Read more

A China Geographer’s View of the World’s Largest Cities, 2022 (in press). Back in high school times in Hong Kong still under British colonial rule, I read with great interest in the South China Morning Post that Shanghai was the largest or second largest city in the world. As a (Hong Kong) Chinese, I was quite pleased to learn of our country’s accomplishment…. ... Read more

China’s Precious Children, Eurasian Pulse 2019. China’s population has been in the international spotlight for decades not only because it is the world’s largest, but also because the “one-child” family planning

policy, introduced in 1980, was the world’s biggest, and probably also one of the

harshest, social engineering projects ... Read more

感謝母親 感謝香江，星島日報(美西版)， 2018年5月14日在一九六四年，母親帶著我們一家五口(包括年邁的祖母)，拿著單程證，從汕頭移居香港 … 閲讀全文

持“单程票”的迁徙者：罗伦斯《迁移系列》的启示 财新网, 2017年04月13日这60幅画讲述了黑人在1910-1930年从南向北、从乡村到城市大迁移的故事，对于我们思考与分析中国的城乡二元制、寻找解决的道路应有启发。… 閲讀全文

中国户籍改革能从美国学什么 《东方早报》2015年12月29日人们往往用美国的国际移民管理与中国户籍制度基础上的国内移民管理作比较，这两种制度确实有很多类似的地方。美国的移民和发展经验及管理制度规定，可以为推动中国户籍改革提供一些有用的参考。… 閲讀全文

China’s Missing Children, South China Morning Post, December 16, 2015. A new generation of children is growing up in China’s countryside with one or no parents around most of the year. The 2010 census counted 61 million children in that category. Nearly half had no parents at home... Read more

渐进的、破冰的全面户籍改革 《保尔森基金会政策备忘录》, 2014年12月戶籍改革是关乎中国发展的重大课题。中国的耕地有限，比美国的还要少，但仍然有二亿多人口依靠农业为生，八亿多仍然拿着“农村户口”的人口。中国要进一步发展，走城镇化的道路，同时让农民工“市民化”，是无可避免的选择。、...閲讀全文