【正文】 or force greater freedom to choose and change jobs. Once the first step was taken toward liberalization, reform in one area quickly called for reform in another. In less than a decade, the rationing system was abolished. Further, since the reform, the work unit system has also been severely weakened. The effectiveness of the hukou system in controlling migration depended primarily on the proper functioning of the abovementioned supporting institutions. The weakening of the rationing and work unit system had eroded the previous multilayered control structure on which the hukou system relied for its function. After the economic reforms, the control of job openings and the daily distribution of necessities were no longer monopolized by the state. Many jobs are now available in the nonstate sector, and almost all daily necessities are amply available on the market. Statesubsidized welfare for urban people has been drastically reduced. Street mittees are more interested in earning money than in performing social surveillance. Without the aid of these institutions,the hukou system can no longer restrict peasants to the countryside. The 1980s and the 1990s witnessed waves of migration from the countryside to the cities. Surveys conducted in 1994 estimated the floating population in Beijing to be million and that of Shanghai to be . These numbers represent 31 percent and 25 percent, respectively,of these two cities’ officially registered population in At the peak of the migration, there were approximately 80 million migrants floating in the entire country. The overall numbers of rural migrants working in China’s cities are large, both as a percentage of the labor force in agriculture (440 million) and as a percentage of the population in major urban destinations. The massive migration has been the largest in scale since munist rule in China. The increasing rural mobility has greatly challenged the very basis of the traditional hukou registration system and has forced the government to adjust its policies. The Chinese government has introduced a series of measures designed to improve the population registration administration under new circumstances. In 1985, a new set of regulations governing temporary residence for workers without a local hukou registration was introduced. These regulations stated that people, age sixteen and older, who intended to remain in urban areas other than their place of hukou registration for more than three months, were required to apply for a Temporary Residence Certificate (zanzhu zheng). According to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), it was estimated that among the floating population of 80 million in 1995, only 44 million were registered as temporary residents. Many peasant migrants simply circumvented the rules and did not register with the MPS after their Meanwhile ， the photo Citizen Identity Card system was applied nationwide. Its use has changed the unit of administration of registration. In the prereform period, the unit was one book per household in cities and towns, and one book per village in the countryside. Today, every person has an ID card regardless of his hukou status. This new approach, better suited to the new circumstance of population mobility, reflects the state’s de facto recognition of millions of peasant migrants and the failure of the hukou system. Fu