Of the many reforms that China’s new leaders will be expected to tackle after they took over in mid-November, one of the most urgent yet potentially divisive is giving migrants and their families the same opportunities in the cities as other citizens. Recently in Beijing, mere talk of allowing children of migrants from the countryside or other cities to write university exams in the capital has triggered a fierce debate and heated exchanges in public between rival groups.

The heart of the problem is China’s system of household registration, or hukou. It forms the basis on which local governments define the privileges to which residents are entitled. Beijing has a large migrant population and also boasts many of the country’s best government-funded schools and universities. The city is not keen to make it easier for holders of non-Beijing hukou to grab a share of these spoils. Even private schools set up specifically for the children of rural migrants are routinely razed by city officials. In effect, a kind of apartheid is at work.

For those with university aspirations it becomes nearly impossible to stay on. This is because students must write the gaokao, or university entrance exam, in their place of household registration. Never mind that this may be somewhere in the sticks which children have rarely if ever visited, and where they may not have close relatives. To make things worse, the gaokao syllabus varies from place to place.  Those who leave Beijing to write the gaokao have little chance of qualifying for higher education in the capital, since the city’s universities allocate a disproportionate number of places to holders of Beijing hukou.

Officials have hinted at change. In August the government asked local administrations to produce “concrete plans” by the end of the year for allowing students to write the gaokao where they actually live. Parents are sceptical. Ominously, the directive calls on local governments to come up with ways to prevent gaokao “migration”: moving to a city in order to a have a better chance of getting into its universities. The directive implies that cities can still set high hurdles for students wishing to take the exam, such as proof of their parents’ employment and of their tax payments and contributions to local social security funds. Many migrants lack such documents.

On October 18, a group of migrants encountered a group of Beijing hukou holders, equally large and upset, outside the commission’s office. During a four-hour standoff, the migrant parents were sworn at. “They keep blaming outsiders for everything that’s wrong in the city,” including traffic jams and crime, says one migrant. In recent months, activists say, they have collected tens of thousands of signatures in Beijing in support of the migrants’ campaign, but have received little love in return. The capital’s police have warned them to stop their petitioning. One was detained and roughed up. But migrants remain defiant. “Now is the time to test their sense of historic responsibility,” says one father, of the country’s incoming leaders.

(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)