A total of 105 rural households in Xuan'en county, Hubei Province, move into collective villas jointly built by the farmers themselves and the local government on Novermber 17, 2012. Photo: CFP

Liao Mei, mother to a 4-year-old girl, finally secured the permission to have a second child in November after she and her husband officially changed their residential status from being urban residents to farmers.

Liao said she is not that eager to have another child right now, but she is simply averse to the family planning policy that only grants people holding an agricultural household registration, or hukou, the opportunity to have a second child.

"It's just like a time bomb. I had been worrying that I would be forced to get an abortion if I got pregnant someday," Liao told the Global Times, saying she feels reassured now with her "farmer" status secured.

In 1958, the country introduced the hukou system, artificially dividing people into rural and urban residents by two statuses - agricultural and non-agricultural.

Liao, 29 and born in Shandong Province, had her hukou status changed to a non-agricultural one when she went to college as the national policy required. Her husband, from Hunan Province, purchased an urban hukou beforehand with a view to enjoying the social benefits for city dwellers only.

"Urban hukou holders were so envied in the past, but everything has changed today," said Liao.

Currently, with a slew of preferential policies toward rural areas and land value enhanced due to city expansion, the country is seeing a surge of "urban residents" seeking to reverse their hukou.

This phenomenon seems contradictory to the urbanization trend seen across China, which leads millions of rural residents to move to towns and is gradually eradicating the two-tiered hukou system. However, before all the special interests intertwined with the two classes are fully eradicated, profit-oriented struggles and protests are expected to continue.

Urbanites back to farmers

"I've succeeded in changing my hukou status back to agricultural," Li Yingying from Deqing county, Zhejiang Province, wrote on her Weibo on January 4, adding that she is proud of being a farmer.

"Farmers have farmlands, this is their biggest advantage," said Li, now working for a local private firm.

In early November, Deqing launched a policy, allowing villagers who graduated from college after 1995 to regain their agricultural hukou in their birthplaces as long as the local village committee and the township government nodded.

The year 1995 was a watershed year for Chinese university and college graduates who were no longer guaranteed a job from then on. But the policy requiring people to relocate their hukou when they left home for further studies remained unchanged until 2003 when it became voluntary.

The policy forced rural students into a major dilemma, as giving up their hukou status to study elsewhere would mean they would lose their portion of farmland.

The Deqing policy soon caught on with locals. According to media reports, more than 800 people lodged applications within a month of the drive starting. Deqing's idea was not a new one. As early as 2007, the city of Taizhou in Jiangsu Province launched pilot schemes akin to this in several counties.

"It's a profit-driven trend. People are making choices after weighing up the benefits attached to the two administratively classified hukou statuses," said Ye Yijian, a media practitioner and writer devoted to studying the country's urbanization rates. "It's unnecessary to heap moral accusations on these people."

In recent years, the superior fortunes of agricultural hukou holders in some well-off areas have emerged. Villagers could receive a noticeable sum of compensation due to land requisitions. Some even enjoyed year-end dividends as stakeholders in a collective economy.

This constitutes an opposite picture as that presented in the 1980s and 1990s when people tried every possible means to obtain an urban hukou, which represents a stable job and a level of social welfare inaccessible to rural residents. According to a report by Xiaokang magazine, as of the first half of 1994, more than 3 million people purchased urban hukou, bringing as much as 25 billion yuan ($4.02 billion) into government coffers.

"My uncle also paid to get one, but it did nothing for him. He still lives in the village, but can't enjoy any of the welfare the locals do," said Liao.

Disputes emerge

During a State Council meeting in late November concerning the amendment to the Law of Land Administration of China, raising the compensation amount for land requisition was one of the major issues. Though the final amount has yet to be revealed, insiders predict that the cap is set to be raised to tenfold the current standard. This prospect has further driven people to want to be classified as farmers.

Xie, a police officer in charge of residence registration in Dongying, Shandong Province, told the Global Times that this is also prevalent in Shandong where many are trying various ways to retrieve their rural identities to reap more profits, even if they are already well-off.

"The massive exodus will absolutely cause the reallocation of rural social resources and then result in a conflict of interest between the returnees and the current villagers," she said.

In March 2010, some villagers in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, claimed that some government employees had switched their hukou status to seek more benefits, prompting an inspection of over 4,000 public servants. At last, 195 were found to have illegally claimed public resources and were ordered to abandon their agricultural hukou status.

These mounting benefits have also produced a series of "ridiculous" cases. Yuan Yulai, a lawyer with the Zhejiang Zhixing Law Firm, encountered a case recently where a woman divorced her husband and then married his father in order to get compensation for the demolition of her house, since her first husband's status as a non-agricultural hukou holder wouldn't help her become a member of the village.

However, the local police still didn't allow her to relocate her hukou to the village, and the family decided to take the problem to the courts. "Her second marriage was accepted by law, yet it violated traditional morals," Yuan told the Global Times. "It highlights the irrationality of benefits being closely linked to a hukou status, which is only supposed to indicate people's place of residence."

Under the pressure brought by this countercurrent, some cities have stepped up actions to control the flow back to rural areas while pushing forward their urbanization drives.

Struggle continues

Not everyone is as lucky as Deqing residents in having an opportunity to integrate. Sun Shuliang, 24, from a village in Shangqiu, Henan, is still fighting for a position in his hometown.

After graduating from college last summer, Sun was unable to register his residence back in his village. Now his hukou remains non-agricultural and based in Shangqiu.

"I really didn't find anything better with an urban hukou than an agricultural one. Take the housing problem, I can't afford one in the city and I have also been deprived of the right to purchase the affordable housing designated for local villagers," said Sun, who now works in a private company in Shanghai.

Besides repeatedly turning to the media for help, the young man has also written to his mayor on the Internet, but has yet to get a response. Compared to Sun who is fighting alone, a group of young people in Ninghai county, Zhejiang Province, have united to fight for their interests since October 2010.

Chen Liuyang, an activist of this lasting "fight," told the Global Times that they have repeatedly protested to the county government, prompting it to realize the full urgency of the matter and step up for related researches.

On September 16, 2012, a group of protesters gathered outside the government building, calling for permission to reacquire their agricultural hukou. They displayed slogans such as "Going to college is not a crime, give back my rights" and "I need my rights to vote and stand for elections."

Their persistent efforts finally brought about certain improvements. A regulation was issued, saying that although they couldn't regain rural hukou, they would enjoy the same economic benefits as the villagers do, except for being entitled to have a second child.

"It's just a temporary improvement, and we are not sure if it still works after the local leadership reshuffle," said Chen.

Radical reform expected

This countercurrent has arisen at a time when the country is vigorously pushing household registration reform to boost urbanization.

During the national political and legal work conference which concluded Tuesday, Meng Jianzhu, secretary of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, said the reform of the country's hukou system will "proceed steadily and orderly so that the majority of migrants can live well in both cities and villages."

In response to this irresistible migratory trend, a rising number of cities have geared up to encourage rural residents and migrants to move to urban areas with a slew of favorable policies. Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, announced in late December that the city would abolish the difference between urban and rural hukou.

The government also said that, in order to promote the orderly flow of populations, it would lower the admission threshold for non-urban dwellers, in particular migrant workers, with a "legal and stable residence" remaining as the only requirement.

While some people applauded an initiative seemingly geared toward social fairness, analysts said its future impacts would depend on the policy-makers' original intention.

"If the measures are formulated to promote urbanization, which can safeguard the farmers' benefits, then it should be encouraged. But if the government aims to take over more farmland in this way, then such reform would be a bad thing," said Hu Xingdou, a professor at the Beijing University of Technology who has been advocating a wholesale cancellation of the hukou system.

"An equal identity doesn't necessarily mean equal benefits. The key to unify the household registration lies in allowing all people to enjoy the same treatment," said Xie.