A history of hukou

BEIJING - Loosely inspired by the Soviet Union's internal passports, China introduced its hukou system 60 years ago to control the flow of rural residents to cities, according to Yao Xiulan, a law professor at Shenzhen University.

Following a provisional regulation issued by the Ministry of Public Security, the policy was rolled out nationwide in 1951, wrote Yao in her paper entitled On the Development and Reform of China's Hukou System, which was published in Legal Science, in May 2004.

Two years later, the Government Administration Council - now the State Council - issued an emergency notice to curb the "blind flow of farmers into cities".