What is China’s hukou system and why is Beijing changing it?

China’s household registration system, better known as hukou, has for decades tied access to education, medicine and retirement benefits to the province where each citizen lived. But faced with a slowing economy and a rapidly ageing population, Beijing has been gradually extending urban services to non-residents. In 2026, the central government went a step further by mandating that all basic public services, from education, housing, healthcare and pensions, be tied to a person’s long-term residence rather than to their official hukou location.