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Flawed residence system does not justify violations
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WE have all heard about mercenary marriages, but this one proves truth is stranger than fiction.
A woman in Chengdu, capital city of Sichuan Province, reportedly married her own father recently. She was hoping the marriage would enable her father to collect the same social benefits as she does, Chengdu Business News reported on February 15.
The woman, known only by her pseudonym Lin Li, has worked for years to qualify for a Chengdu hukou, or household residency, which entitles her to a local pension, social welfare and health care.
Her migrant father, however, is denied those privileges because he does not have a hukou. In an ill-considered attempt to practice filial piety, Lin married her father as her spouse would automatically be granted a hukou and the related rights. Marriage with locals is one way for migrants to obtain a hukou.
Although the marriage registration surprisingly got the nod — marriage between blood relatives is forbidden under Chinese law — Lin was dismayed when the application for a hukou on her father’s behalf was rejected for unspecified reasons.
All her efforts had been in vain and she divorced her father. The story quickly grabbed national headlines.
Moral condemnation
Notwithstanding her well-meaning intentions, her unusual act was motivated by sheer greed and recklessness, and constitute a blatant ethical violation, critics say.
Moralists question, rightfully, if Lin ever considered that her pursuit of tangible benefits should be constrained by the observation of certain values and taboos.
While criticism is directed almost overwhelmingly at the woman, some commentators have rallied to her defense, citing institutional factors in driving her to commit such an act of folly. This is a cliched argument, centered on hukou and the urban-rural dichotomy born of it.
Indeed, the country’s household registration system is largely responsible for the creation of left-behind children and spouses — a cruel byproduct of China’s great migration. But even some migrants who manage to acquire a coveted urban hukou are sometimes given a cold shoulder.
The Beijing News reported in September that elderly migrants in Beijing often have to pay medical bills themselves in their adopted city instead of enjoying subsidized services, because they only contributed to the public health care accounts in their native provinces.
And since the national health care network is not integrated, migrants can seldom get a full reimbursement back home for the medical fees incurred in, say, Beijing, since remuneration standards vary from region to region.
Reforms needed
The encumbered access to health care is but one example of why it is hard for migrants to call cities home, in spite of their nominally ‘urbanite’ status. While wholesale reform of the household registration system is elusive, piecemeal but significant steps have pointed to a positive trend.
At a State Council meeting on February 8, presided over by Premier Li Keqiang, it was decided that urban and rural pension systems were to be combined to eliminate the dual-track pension payments that have led many underprivileged to cry foul.
For all the populist opposition from vested interests, similar reforms in health care are expected. To people like Lin Li, this means their outrageously desperate move may now appear to be a last resort, but not for ever.
Lin’s sympathizers need to understand that any reform of the entrenched hukou will take time. Unfortunately, lack of progress in this direction leads some people to make incredibly bad choices.
There are daily examples of people shrewdly trying to exploit legal or systematic loopholes.
Heaping blame on the system may be easy, but it is not always justifiable for unscrupulous people to work the system to their advantage.
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