In China, a chorus for reforms

BEIJING: More than a dozen Chinese newspapers took a rare stand this week against a Mao Zedong-era system blamed for the wide gap between the country’s rich and poor. Within hours, their jointly signed editorial had largely disappeared online.

"China has been tasting the bitterness of the household registration system for a long time!" Monday’s editorial began. "Freedom of movement is a human right," it added. It was "signed" with the logos of 13 newspapers.

Household registration, or hukou, essentially identifies each Chinese citizen as urban or rural. It dates back to the time when the Chinese revolutionary Mao wanted to control migration to cities.

The system’s limits became increasingly clear in recent years as millions of migrant workers left their rural homes to find work in China’s booming cities. Their residence status, however, remains with their hometowns, and not having the proper classification restricts access to government services like education. Changing a hukou can be difficult.

Even children born to migrant workers in the cities are registered back home, keeping them outside the cities’ normal education system. Many end up in sometimes makeshift migrant schools that fend for themselves for resources.

Premier Wen Jiabao responded to the rising public opposition to the hukou system during a rare online chat with citizens on Saturday, saying the government would speed up its reform. The editorial noted Wen’s comments as a sign of hope.

Speaking with a coordinated voice isn’t unusual for China’s state-run media, but it is when that voice challenges the central government itself. By Tuesday, several of the editorials, plus links to them, had disappeared from websites, likely falling victim to belated self-censorship.

The editor of the Yunnan Information Paper, Tan Zhiliang, said the editors considered that the national congress starts this week, "assessed the risk" and took it down.

But some reporters were determined not to let the issue fade away. On Tuesday, a reporter for a Hong Kong-based media outlet stood up during a news conference and asked officials if they had seen the editorial. AP