Illustration: Liu Rui

Going to university in the city used to be a golden ticket for students from rural areas who were looking to shift their hukou (residence permit) to an urban area. As soon as they enrolled at a city university, they could move their residence and become entitled to basic welfare and State-provided services that are usually better in urban areas than in rural communities. This could continue if they could secure a job at a State-owned institution or firm.

Recently, however, more and more rural students are refusing to transfer their hukou to urban areas at the start of their studies. Why has an urban hukou suddenly become less attractive?

The choice of college students from rural areas tends to be realistic and interest-oriented. In the past few years the government has introduced a number of policies favorable to farmers, such as subsidizing seed and machinery purchases and no longer requiring harvest quotas or agricultural taxes. For residents who hold a rural household registration, the key benefits are a grant of arable land, demolition compensation and year-end dividends.

For example, in Beijing's rural areas like Daxing district, a family with 200 square meters of land may be granted two to three apartments plus compensation of around 400,000 yuan if their house is demolished.

 In addition, the New Rural Co-operative Medical Care Insurance, established in 2008, subsidizes farmers for medical costs. The individuals, central government and the local government pay for the insurance package. Individuals pay less than 100 yuan annually, and they can have up to 80 percent of their medical costs reimbursed.

But if college students transfer their rural hukou to where their universities are, they can't switch back to their original status later. Nowadays many jobs in the cities no longer offer rural students an urban hukou. So what happen to the rural graduates is often that their hukou are kicked back to the townships that administer the villages they were born in - but they are not entitled to the welfare benefits of the township, nor to the benefits of the village. They are forgotten citizens, caught in between city and countryside.

This is where China's urbanization's paradox lies. We all know that China is undergoing rapid urbanization, if one simply looks at the number of people relocated. But college students' choices shows a trend of de-urbanization.

The quest of most rural people for an urban hukou, as I understand it, is a search for identity. This notion includes many aspects of human dignity, such as pride, wealth, equality and respect, which rural migrants once believed they could get from China's urbanization.

But the tragedy of China's urbanization is that rural migrants are in the city rather than of the city. They are the most likely workers to be laid off in the competitive labor market. They cannot catch up with soaring house prices. They have to pay much more to send their kids to school in the city. Even as they desperately pursue an urban identity, they find themselves further and further away from their original goal.

So if they can get a sense of security and welfare in their rural hometowns, why bother going to the cities? The implication of college students giving up urban hukou is simple: City identity is no longer as attractive as it once was. But potentially, this process of deurbanization can help release the pressure of big cities, and raise the quality of life in both rural and urban areas.

A promising sign of this can be found in Huaxi village in Jiangsu Province. In the past few decades it has transformed from a sleepy farming town to a surreal version of utopia where every person is entitled to free healthcare and education, as well as a luxurious home. While residents can enjoy all the benefits when living in Huaxi, the catch is that if they leave the village, they will lose everything they have there. The villagers look at it this way: Once you're already living in the best village in China, why leave?

The government doesn't need to stress urbanization. In places like Huaxi village, its development is attributed to its local collective autonomy. The residents' basic rights have been better preserved than those in urban cities so as to guarantee their economic benefits.

When China's urbanization can't live up to the expectation of rural migrants, they can only resort to where they felt a sense of belonging and security.

The author is a reporter with the Global Times. wangwenwen@globaltimes.com.cn