History of China in the Hukou Booklet

China's hukou system can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period more than 2,000 years ago. At that time, the nations were at war, and population became the most important resource, and there was no one. Taxes, servitude, and soldiers are all based on the population. Under the auspices of Shang Ying, the Qin State took the lead in establishing a strict household registration system, "within the four borders, husbands and women are all famous, the living are written, and the dead are cut." And prohibit the free movement of the people, "abolish the rebellion brigade", "so that the people have no permission to migrate", the people have to go out to stay in the hotel, must have a letter of introduction issued by the official, otherwise the guests and the store will be punished together. Through the establishment of a strict household registration system, the Qin state gained a strong ability to absorb fiscal and tax revenues and mobilize the whole people, and won the battle for hegemony. At the end of Qin, Liu Bang's army invaded Xianyang, the generals were busy robbing gold and silver treasures, robbing beautiful women, and Xiao He was the first to collect the household registration files of the Qin Dynasty, which reflected his extraordinary political vision.

The hukou system has two most important functions: one is to ensure the collection of taxes and servitude, and the other is to achieve social control. After the establishment of the government, one of the first things that must be done is to count and register the population of the whole country.

Han Dynasty: From citizens to private citizens

In the mid-autumn of a certain year of the Han Dynasty (the eighth month of the lunar calendar), the northwest had a clear sky. At the entrance of the county government in Juyan County, Zhangye County, there was a long queue of people, who were residents of Juyan County, who, in accordance with the laws and regulations of the state, helped the old and the young, came to the county government to register their household registration, and accepted the inspection of the government. This process is called "case comparison".

Xu Zong, a flint chief (head of the frontier outpost) in the west of Juyan County, was also caught in the crowd. He is 50 years old this year, with a family of 7 and a total of 13,000 yuan in property (including houses, fields and cattle). He must truthfully report this household registration information to the yamen, and the yamen will register and make a register.

The Han Dynasty inherited the Qin Dynasty's national household registration system, and all landlords, yeoman farmers, hired farmers, helpers, and merchants across the country were incorporated into the national household registration, which was called "household registration and people". The state requires all counties to make a case comparison in the middle of each year, and to create a new household register, which includes the name, gender, age, identity, place of origin, number and gender of family members, the relationship between family members and the head of household, and property status (including the number of slaves and maids). Then, the county government will make a register of each household and report it to the county, and the county will report it to the imperial court, and the imperial court will set up "Ji Xiang" and "Hu Cao" to govern the national household registration.

In a legal sense, the so-called "household and people" means that all Han residents who are registered in the household register, regardless of east, west, north and south, regardless of gender, age or child, are citizens of the state (please note that the word "citizen" has appeared as early as the pre-Qin period, meaning "people of the state", as opposed to "private citizens" affiliated with the aristocracy), and have equal rights and obligations. The most important of these obligations is to provide taxes and forced labor to the state. In the Han Dynasty, a property tax was levied on the basis of the amount of money paid by the family, but it was mainly a poll tax, including "arithmetic tax" (levied on adults between the ages of 15 and 56), "koufu" (levied on minors), and "household tax" (levied on a per-household basis). In addition, every adult male must also serve the state for two years, "garrison" three days a year, and one month of unpaid labor in the county. Xu Zong's position as the chief of the Sui should belong to the "frontier" conscription. The Han Dynasty also restricted free movement, and households had to be approved by the "village husband" to move their household registration. Leaving the country in exile is against the law. All taxation and conscription, as well as the realization of social control, must be supported by a well-developed hukou system.

The emergence of "household and people" is a major change in China from feudalism to the county system. Under the feudal system of the Western Zhou Dynasty, there was no national household registration system, and it was neither necessary nor possible for the whole people to register their household registration, because Zhou Tianzi except for retaining the land of Wangji, most of the rest of the land and population were divided into countless vassal states. And the princes also kept only a small piece of fiefdom, and divided the rest of the land to the various doctors. In other words, the only land that Zhou Tianzi could directly control was the small Wangji. Although the Zhou Dynasty had an official of "Si Min", "the number of the people in the palm of the hand, and the number of self-generated teeth and above, all of them are written in the edition", but the population of the "book in the edition" (included in the household registration) here is obviously only the subjects living in Wangji. As for the population of the vassal states, Zhou Tianzi had no control over it. In the same way, the population of the major princes and fiefs is not controlled by the princes. In this way, the population under the classical feudal system belonged to different levels of aristocracy (Zhou Tianzi, princes and doctors), who were the "private citizens" of the nobles at all levels, rather than citizens of the state. Such a society is also a multi-layered tower-like society.

After the collapse of the pre-Qin feudal system, the social structure became flattened, there were no longer nobles, and therefore no longer "private people", and all subjects became the members of the state. This can be seen as the progress of the times, because the establishment of the household means the liberation of the people from the state of personal dependence subordinate to the nobility. But at the same time, this may also be a historical trap, because without the middle class of the aristocracy, the state directly governs countless "households and people", which can easily lead to the enslavement of the state to the people and the dependence of the people on the state.

When Xu Zong, a resident of the Han Dynasty, was queuing up to declare his hukou, he should not have thought of the profound historical changes behind the hukou system, but he must have known that if he missed or misrepresented his hukou information, he would be punished by the government. Two thousand years later, a number of Han Janes were unearthed in Juyan and other places in northwest China, including Xu Zong's household registration files. Thanks to these cultural relics preserved in the wind and sand for 2,000 years, we still have the opportunity to see the face of the Han Dynasty household registration archives today:

Xu Zong, 50 years old, one wife, one son (son of the head of the household), two male (brothers of the head of the household), two women (sisters of the head of the household). The first district of the house is 3,000 acres, 50 acres of land is 5,000, and 2 oxen are 5,000.

Tang Dynasty: Good people and untouchables stand side by side

If Xu Zong had lived in the Tang Dynasty, he would have had to undergo a procedure called "Tuanxiang" when he declared his household registration information. "Tuanxiang", inherited from the Sui Dynasty's "appearance reading" system, means that when the county yamen registers the household registration, the county yamen must check the age of all the people on the household register, so as to prevent people from falsely reporting their age or pretending to be disabled to evade servitude. According to the laws of the Tang Dynasty, men and women under the age of 3 are "yellow", under the age of 15 are "small", under the age of 20 are "medium", and male residents over 21 years old are "ding" and 60 years old are "old". Becoming a soldier means taking on the enlistment.

Family registration, including "Tuanxiang", is held every three years. Because of the "group appearance" procedure, the household registration records of the Tang Dynasty usually also recorded the physical characteristics of the households, such as skin color, height, and facial characteristics. In the fragments of Tang Dynasty account accounts unearthed in Dunhuang, it was found that many household registration materials were marked with words such as "the right foot is lame, the ear is small, and there are sunspots on the face". In ancient times, there was no photographic technology, and these descriptions of physical features were equivalent to photographs, which could prevent forgery and serve as clues to the pursuit of people after they fled from their homes. This also shows that the household registration system in the Tang Dynasty has developed more strictly.

In the Tang Dynasty, due to the creation of the uniform field system from the Northern Wei Dynasty, the state had to grant land to each family according to the Dingkou on the household register, and each man over the age of 18 was granted 100 mu of land, of which 80 mu was "Koufen Field", and after the death of the person who received the land, it was taken back by the state, and the other 20 mu was "Yongye Field". In principle, both the Koufentian and the Yongye Field are not allowed to be bought and sold freely, and the sale of the Yongye Field is only allowed when the household registration is relocated or the funeral is not possible. Women are generally not granted land, only when they are the head of the household, and widows and concubines can also be granted 30 acres. The number of land granted by merchants was half that of civilians. The nobles and bureaucrats could own land from 200 acres to 100 hectares. The common people who received land granted by the state were required to pay taxes and serve the country. In the Tang Dynasty, the levy also belonged to the poll tax, and each ding paid two stones per year, which was called "rent"; two zhang of silk was lost, which was called "tune"; and 20 days of conscription were served every year, and if they were not served, they were paid according to three feet of silk per day, which was called "yong", and together, it was the system of "rent and yong".

The equalization system is a relatively equal property system, which generally realizes that the cultivator has his own land, and inhibits land annexation. But peasants are therefore tied to the land and unable to move freely. If ordinary people want to go far away, they need to apply for a "public inspection" (similar to a pass) from the official of the place of household registration before they can enter and exit Guanjin. We thought that Chang'an City could come and go freely, that was a romantic imagination. If the gatekeeper of the city let a person who had not been "notarized" enter the customs, he would be punished with one year's hard labor.

However, the biggest difference between the household registration system in the Tang Dynasty and the Qin and Han dynasties was not the addition of the procedure of "group appearance", but the formation of two unequal classes of "household arrangement" and "non-household arrangement", with households being good citizens (free people) and non-household members being untouchables (non-free people). In other words, only one part of the people of the state are covered by the household, the good people, and the other part of the people are untouchables, who are not eligible for household registration, but can only be attached to the main family. The untouchables of the Tang Dynasty mainly consisted of official untouchables who served the government, such as workers, musicians, and miscellaneous households, as well as private untouchables who were attached to the clan of the gatekeepers, i.e., tribesmen and slaves, who were private property and could be traded like goods and livestock.

The Tang Dynasty system of good and cheap originated from the "second feudalization" of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties: a group of scholars slowly evolved into a family of gate lords who monopolized political power, economic privileges, and social status, and they attached great importance to the revision of the pedigree, and only intermarried among the wealthy families in order to maintain their noble bloodline, while another group of commoners who lost their land and property became subordinate to the gate lords, slaves, and maids, and lost their independent legal status. This is a bit like the relationship between the aristocracy and private subordinates in the pre-Qin period, but the "feudalism" after the Wei and Jin dynasties was not a state system, but a social structure.

If we want to travel back in time to the Tang Dynasty, then please pray first: don't be born into a lowly family.

Song Dynasty: Freedom of Movement

From the Tang Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, Chinese society underwent a great transformation, opening the historical period of the Middle Ages and the Modern Era. We will only introduce the changes related to the household registration system: after five generations of fighting, the clan of the gate lord collapsed and disappeared into the dust of history, and the original tribe was able to get rid of the state of personal dependence, obtain the status of good citizens, and be included in the country's household and people. That is, the untouchables in the past, whether they were tribes or slaves, basically disappeared in the Song Dynasty, or in other words, they all became free people.

The household registration system of the Song Dynasty no longer distinguishes the people into "good people" and "untouchables", but according to the city or township, they are divided into "fangguo households" and "rural households", which is the earliest urban household registration in Chinese history, which means that the urban population has expanded, and the citizen class has been formed. According to whether the residents have real estate, they are divided into "main households" and "customers", and then the main households are divided into different households according to the amount of family property. The household registration file of the Song Dynasty was called the "Fifth Class Ding Property Book", which was made up every three years, although it carried the word "Ding", but in fact the division of the fifth class household had nothing to do with the number of people in each household, but was based on the amount of property of each household. There is a background here that needs to be explained clearly: after the Middle and Tang Dynasty, the Juntian system had been dissolved, and the Song Dynasty established the country, that is, it recognized the reality of complete private ownership of land, allowed the free flow of property rights, and did not suppress annexation, so the rich and poor were divided and often converted into each other. The Xu Zong of the Han Dynasty had only "13,000 yuan", and according to the standards of the Song Dynasty, he could only mix with a low-class household at most. Of course, if he had worked hard, accumulated wealth, and bought land, it was not impossible for him to rise to the upper class in the future. You must know that "the rich and the poor are uncertain" is a characteristic of the society of the Song Dynasty.

The division of households according to property is for the purpose of taxation and conscription. The tax system of the Song Dynasty completed the transformation from a poll tax to a property tax-based "rent adjustment" based on the ideal of "equal property" has withdrawn from the historical stage at this time, and has been replaced by the "two tax laws" of "the difference between the rich and the poor". Due to the implementation of the conscription system (mercenaries) in the Song Dynasty, the people no longer need to serve in the military, only errand service remains, and in the past, conscription was apportioned according to the capitation, while the Song Dynasty had a tendency to replace military service with money, and it was linked to households, that is, the wealthy had to bear heavier service obligations. From the poll tax to the property tax, it is the characteristic of society from the Middle Ages to the modern era.

The personal constraints of household registration on the common people are also weakening. In the Song Dynasty, the commodity economy was developed (the tax and levy income from commerce exceeded the agricultural tax, which was unprecedented), the quiet and stable social order of small farmers had been broken, and it was common for peasants to abandon farming and engage in business. The customer has no land, let alone be tied to the land, "once he loses his care, he will go next year", and according to the legislation of the Song Dynasty, the customer wants to quit and leave, and the main household can not be obstructed. Customers are also known as "floaters" because they are floating. In some places, due to the fact that "there are few main households and many customers, and the contacts are uncertain, and it is especially difficult to remember the mouth", even household registration has been difficult. There were more floating people in the cities - in the Song Dynasty, the city was open and anyone could flow in, and merchants, mercenary workers, and displaced people, such as Jiankang Mansion, was once "a place to stay in the capital, and the displaced people from all over the world often gathered here, and none of them had any work". The Song Dynasty also had a certain openness in the management of household registration: a person who moved to live in a place for more than a year could obtain a local hukou.

The society of the Song Dynasty was far more mobile and dynamic than its predecessors because of its remarkable openness and commercial attributes. A person from the Song Dynasty sighed: "The ancients were in the same well in the countryside, and everyone relocated to the land, flowing far away, with nothing to give, and was humiliated in vain, and even for life." The people of the modern world, lightly go to the countryside and migrate to the four directions, it is not a problem. And living for a year, that is, listening to the subordinate, is lighter than in ancient times. ”

Ming Dynasty: The establishment and disintegration of the professional household system

The development of history does not always move forward, and sometimes it goes backwards. During the Song Dynasty, peasants abandoned their fields and went out to do business, and the local government proposed to take back these fields, which was criticized and rejected by the household department. In other words, the property rights and business rights of the peasants were recognized by the imperial court. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the peasants did not have this freedom to choose their jobs, and Zhu Yuanzhang strictly forbade the peasants to abandon farming and engage in business, and ordered the people to keep the fields, and "the cities and villages are never allowed to have Yifu".

Zhu Yuanzhang, who founded the Ming Dynasty, rebuilt a peaceful order based on small farmers. This is reflected in the household registration system, in which the Ming government divided the national household registration into private households, military households, and artisan households according to the division of labor, and the private households engaged in agriculture and paid agricultural taxes to the state and served conscription; military households were obliged to perform military service; artisan households were required to perform labor service for the court, the government, and the government-run handicraft industry. The children of farmers have been working for generations, the children and grandchildren of craftsmen have been working for generations, and the children and grandchildren of soldiers have been in the army for generations.

This professional household system was inherited from the Yuan Dynasty's "Colorful Household System". After the Yuan people entered the Central Plains, in order to strengthen the personal attachment of the people to the state, the establishment of the grassland characteristics of the "all kinds of households" system, the residents of the territory were divided into private households, military households, station households, stove households, artisan households, Confucian households, medical households, yin and yang households, eagle hunting households and other nearly 100 kinds of household registration, once the occupation is demarcated, from generation to generation, shall not be changed at will. Compared with the modernization trend of the transformation of servitude to property tax in the Song Dynasty, the "Zhucai Household Plan" is undoubtedly a reversal of history.

Zhu Yuanzhang issued an edict in the second year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty: "All military, civilian, medical, craftsman, yin and yang households, all kinds of households, are allowed to copy the original newspaper as the determination, and must not act arbitrarily and become chaotic; The household registration completely copied the "color household plan" of the Yuan Dynasty. The following year, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered a national census to be conducted, and two copies of each book were registered, and the household registration was kept in the government, similar to today's household registration files, and the household registration was handed over to the residents, similar to today's household registration book. This household registration system still follows the Yuan Dynasty's "Household Scheme", which is divided into various occupational households. At the same time, the social control established on the household registration system was further strengthened, and the Ming government stipulated that the scope of peasants' activities was limited to one mile from the place where their household registration was located, so that "they could enter and leave their hometowns in the morning and evening, and know each other's ways of work and rest." Anyone who left his hometown for 100 miles would be "immediately quoted by the text"; businessmen who went out to do business must also receive a "road guide" (similar to a letter of introduction) issued by the government; otherwise, they would be treated as nomads, and "in the worst case, they would be killed, and at the worst they would be exiled"; Neighbors in the place where the merchant is registered are required to know the return date of those who have gone out to do business, and to report to the authorities if they do not return after two years.

The household registration system at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty was conducive to the establishment of an orderly and quiet social order, but the residents were tightly bound to the household registration and were not allowed to move freely, and the vitality of society was also lost. It was not until the middle and late Ming Dynasty, with the relaxation of the professional household system and the rise of the commodity economy, that the Ming Dynasty society regained the openness, mobility and modernization of the Song and Song dynasties.

During the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court announced that "the land is divided into mu", and household registration is no longer used as the basis for taxation. However, the social control function of the hukou system has been retained.

(Excerpted from "Can't See enough of Chinese History", Sichuan People's Publishing House/Publishing)