Document #1121541
IRB – Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (Author)
No specific information is currently
available on this subject among the sources regularly consulted by
the IRBDC. However, please find attached excerpts from two
publications which explain how the "household registration" system
works. These publications are: "Deviance, Modernization, Rations,
and Household Registers in Urban China" by Lynn T. White (pp.
151-169) and Whyte and Parish's Urban Life in Contemporary
China (pp. 16-26).
For further information, the IRBDC
contacted two noted Canadian Sinologists. According to Professor
Jan Walls of Simon Fraser University, the fact of a person's
emigration would be entered on the household file and the file
would be kept in the local office of the Public Security Bureau
(PSB). The file is not destroyed or cancelled. Upon return to the
country, the person would report to a neighbourhood committee, a
work unit and most likely the PSB as well. This would insure that
the household registration was restored in the place of residence
of the returning emigre.
According to Professor Hugh Johnson of the
University of British Columbia, who has previously carried out
primary research with the use of the household registration
ledgers, when a student, for example, goes abroad the household
registration is not surrendered. The Local PSB will be advised that
this person is abroad for officially-sanctioned reasons. But in
actual emigration, the registration is terminated in the sense that
"left the country" is marked in the ledger books. This step has
some significance, because for a peasant, any land holdings are
reallocated while in the case of a city dweller, access to
subsidized food is cut off. Professor Johnson further added that a
lapse in the household registration, such as in the case of a
Chinese person who emigrated and then returned to China, would not
be a big issue because the registration can in most cases be easily
re-established. The only time a person is actually struck off the
ledger is in the case of death. Professor Johnson further pointed
out that the registration ledgers may not always be current, and he
has observed ledgers which are out of date.
The information provided by these two
sources cannot currently be corroborated by the IRBDC.
ATTACHMENTS
Lynn T. White III, "Deviance,
Modernization, Rations, and Household Registers in Urban China", in
Amy Auerbacher Wilson, et. al., Deviance and Social Control in
Chinese Society, (New York: Praeger Press, 1977), pp.
151-169.
Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish.
Urban LIfe in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 16-26.