It’s been three years since I last visited Beijing, and the changes are dramatic—streets have been widened, medians vegetated; even the Forbidden City is renovating for the 2008 Olympics. China is rallying to present its best face to the world, determined to flesh out its economic power in terms that even Westerners can understand. And this new China is exactly what the typical visitor ambling into Wang Fu Jing shops or sloshing through neon-bright night bars will see.

What they won’t see is the stagnation outside the urban wonderland, particularly the ever-widening urban-rural gap that threatens the core of China’s social structure. Despite the country’s progress in the last two decades, it cannot reach its full economic potential until it bridges this disparity.

China’s current urban-rural situation is indeed in dire straits. Official data show that the average rural resident makes only 32 percent of the income of his urban counterparts—a statistic that is at its worst level since data first became available in 1952. And it may even underestimate the problem. According to a 2004 report to the United Nations Poverty Reduction Taskforce, if non-monetary benefits are considered, the real difference between a Chinese city-dweller and his fellow countryman may not be merely three times, but six, the biggest such disparity in the world.

While the reasons for this difference are many and complex, an important part of the matter can be explained by China’s hukou system, which registers all households, dividing the population very specifically into urban and rural. Each local jurisdiction provides only holders of its hukou with access to social services like healthcare and education. Given the immense difficulty of switching hukous, the system results in a relatively immobile population.

Hukous also raise a social wall between rural and urban residents, as the identification booklets very clearly separate the two classes of people. While the situation has improved dramatically in recent years, there is still a sort of condescending societal snobbery that regards the rural class as inferior.

Perhaps the more pressing problem is that hukous help perpetuate the imperviousness of the rich-poor divide. As is the case anywhere in the world, the poor are stuck in the catch-22 income-education cycle: the only way for them to break out of low-paying jobs is to get an education, but the only way to get an education is with money. Hukous exacerbate the problem by forcing those without them to pay a steeper price for tuition. For example, in the typical city of Fenghua, rural hukou-holders pay almost three times more for education than hukou-holders from the city. Compounded with discrimination that makes college admission harder for rural hukou-holders, Chinese laws are indefinitely perpetuating a divide that can only spell further economic and social unrest.

To be fair, hukou reforms have been underway. Some cities have loosened requirements so that rural migrants who have lived and worked there for a year can obtain urban hukous. Others have started allowing registration of rural hukou-holders from outlying counties. But these reforms are still moving too slowly. Only the small cities have begun reform, but most migrants go to larger cities where integration remains difficult.

It may be too much to suggest the immediate elimination of the hukou system, but the system should be changed: first to allow Chinese citizens to live where they want without excessive bureaucratic restrictions, and second to eliminate the distinction between rural and urban. Reform will mean more human mobility, which in turn means a freer labor force. Furthermore, large-city dwellers could move to other cities, giving middle-sized cities huge growth potential. Given the many social and economic advantages to hukou reform, it would be unwise for China's government to wait much longer.

I’ll never forget what one Chinese friend told me—that the difference between insiders and outsiders looking at China is that outsiders looking at China see hope; insiders see despair. I don't think it has to be that way. Maybe my hopeful attitude just means I’m an outsider who left China too early and lived in the States too long. But I’d like to think that what I see happening in Beijing can happen for the rest of China too. Unfortunately, that’s something that will take longer than 2008 to accomplish. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

N. Kathy Lin ’08, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House. She is from the rural areas…of Texas.