From Reuters:

Despite a push for reform ahead of this week's annual legislative meeting, the household registration, or hukou, system is likely to stay in place for the near future, slowing China's rapid urbanization by denying city services to its estimated 200 million migrant workers…. Defenders of the system contend cities are unable to provide the services migrants demand in the absence of a nationwide and transferable social security network. "The main problem with changing this system is some powerful opposition, especially from the public security apparatus and the city governments who face a really high cost," said Dorothy Solinger, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, who has written about China's hukou system. "They'd have to expand schools for migrants as well as pensions and benefits for people who have moved temporarily, or even permanently, to the cities. There's been a real plea from city governments not to burden them."

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